-r 



2 4i£_ 



m 



mtt\(nn^%xi: 



I T S A W F U L ALTITUDE. 



A^ !!*i A. T I Ja E . 



American Artists, (th ! 
American Patrons, psha'W'!! 
American Critics, BAH!!.!, 



By JOHN F R A N K E N S T E 




CI NCINN A TI: 
1864. 



AMERICAN ART: 



ITS AWFUL ALTITUDE. 



¥ 



S A T I K 



American Artists, ah ! 
American Patrons, pshaw 1 ! 
American Critics, BAH ! 1 I 

Old scores to settle, 

And sores to heal, 
I '11 show my mettle, 

And use my heel, 

Rough-shod, 

ByG — d! 

To friends departed, 

The noble-hearted, 

Alive or dead. 
Who 've cheered me often, 
My words will soften 

To love Instead. 



Written during the Third Year of the Great TlebellioH, 18G3-4, 
By JOHN FRANKENSTEIN. 




I 



CINCINNATI, OHIO: 
1864. 



4- 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 18G4, 

By JOHN FRANKENSTEIN, 

In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
District of Ohio. 



2. ^ 



O '^'- ^^. 



EXPLANATORY. 



As I may possibly have readers not acquainted with our town 
and its history, I would state to them that the erection of the 
Pioneer Monument, and, of course, the delivery of the speech of 
Billem Sorry, Esq., are pure fictions. The Pioneer Association ac- 
cepted a secondhand design offered by Tremendous Dead Bones, 
Esq., Sculptor ; but with this effort their monumental energies ex- 
pired. Aside, however, from his allusions to this erection, the 
speech by Billem Sorry, Esq., deals in nothing but facts, except 
that the ancient maiden of the Ladies' Academy of the Eine Arts is 
also an invention, and that the hoops of the fat member may appear 
a year or so before the fashion. 

None of the facts and opinions, none of the likes and dislikes it 
contains, are Billem Sorry's, but my own — all except the sublime 
self-conceit ; that is Billem Sorry's. To exhibit this in its per- 
fection I was obliged to resort to the machinery I have employed. 

The other statements in the poem affecting real persons are liter- 
ally true. Where an individual is speaking in the first person, all 
the words used, placed within quotation marks, are actual quota- 
tions from the mouth of that person. 

The names also are all real but those in the list below. I changed 
these only because such was my whim. In order to be strictly im- 
partial, but chiefly because I want the real names to be known, I 
give them opposite the nickname in the order they appear. 

Nickname. Real name. 

TREMENDOUS DEAD BONES, Esq., . . THOS. D. JONES, Esq., 
.ScTTr.PTOK. Sculptor. 

BILLEM SOllRY, Esq., WM. M. CORRY, Esq., 

Democratic copperhead politician . 
NICK LITTLEAVORTII, . The late NICHOLAS LONOWORTII, 

Blilliouaire of Oiuciunati, 



IV EXPLANATORY. 

BILLY 'DAMS, WM. A. ADAMS, 

Who lives on the east side of Broadway, 
below Fourth street, Cincinnati ; the 
same who heads the list of honorary 
members of the New York National 
Academj' of 1 



An urgent — almost importunate — request induces me to leave out 
of this list a name already written for the printer ; the request ex- 
tended to the text — but that I will not give up. The papers of to- 
day (March 15) give additional proof of the correctness of one at 
least of the amiable characteristics imputed to him. 

PRETTY POPKINS, L. C. HOPKINS, 

Dry goods merchant, at the N. E. corner 
of Fifth and Vine streets, Cincinnati. 

MR. PHLIPPS, R. C. PHILLIPS, a surveyor, 

SCRATCH-CLUB, SKETCH-CLUB. 

Though an actual person, I pass by Baby-booby ; let me say, how- 
ever, emphatically, that I do 7iot mean Mr. , his partner. 

My landlord's name I leave out, by particular request. 

i cotild heartily have wished that Wm. Page, E. Leutze, T. Bu- 
chanan Read and Geo. L. Brown, with all of whom my personal re- 
lations have been pleasant, had not compelled me to write regarding 
them as I hat^e done. That they are prominently before the public, 
that they could prove ability did they but choose to exert it, makes 
the case only the worse and my duty the more imperative, 

I have had no grand intention of improving the existing con- 
dition of Art. I wrote only because I wanted to write. My brother 
hating disposed of my large picture, Series of Niagara No. 2, by 
subscription — not with that intention, however — I am enabled to 
print and publish this on my sole responsibility. 

After the publication of this work I shall be prepared to find my- 
self depicted as a monster of crime, folly and vices. Should there 
be any who would wish to busy themselves in this way, let them use 
their pleasure. 

Those who wish to address me will please direct to Station D, 
New York City. 

Cincinnati, Ohio, March 15, 1864. 



DEDICATORY. 



Cincinnati, Ohio, Oct. 3, 1863. 
Mr. Wm. H. COMSTOCK, 14 and 16 West Pearl st., Cincinnati, Ohio : 

Mine Ancient Friend —Please find inclosed the Ten Dollars 
($10 00) I borrowed of you some months ago. When I first asked 
you to lend it to me, I requested the loan for one month ; on the 
day that month expired, you were not in when I came to your store. 
I went there again the next day, desiring you to extend the time, 
stating, however, distinctly that I had the money with me (having 
borrowed it elsewhere) to pay you then. You acceded to my second 
request. Since no specified time was mentioned on the last occasion, 
and learning that you had a conversation with my brother George 
on the subject, I deemed it unnecessary to say anything more until 
I was able and willing to redeem the debt. 

"When I first borrowed this money of you, a man whom we both 
have know6 long had promised, within a very short time, to pay me 
a part of what he owed me ; he is a first-rate fellow, yefr he failed to 
keep his promise ; not only that, he has, voluntarily promised again 
since, but I have not, to this moment, received a cent from him. I 
am satisfied, however, that he can not very well help it. 

Perhaps you do not know how much I am constantly disappointed 
and vexed in my little money-matters. Although I have for a long 
time in this city, faithfully and diligently labored to do good work 
in several branches of painting and sculpture ; although I have 
carefully avoided having a family on my hands ; although I have 
reduced my own wants.to what is absolutely necessary; never even 
using whisky or tobacco in any form, the first of which, at least, you 
enjoy in such abundance : still, I get so little to do, and that little 
is in most cases so long being paid for, while in other instances it is 
not paid for at all, that I am never free from petty though vexatious 
embarrassments. 

Something over a year ago, the idea became distinct in my brain 
that my old boyhood friend, Wm. H. Comstock, had gathered of the 
goods of this world so as to be wealthy. I thought that he, being 
probably not aAvare of the diminutive though dogging difficulties 
with which I was beset, would, were the case presented to him, order 
work for two or three hundred dollars ; would interest himself to get 
ten or twelve of his wealthy friends to do likewise ; thus obtaining 



VI DEDICATORY. 

for me, certainly a very moderate sum, yet one sufficient, if invested, 
to relieve me so that I could continue my work in comparative peace. 

I also thought, and think now, when a man has thus diligently 
labored for many years in a community, that his cotemporaries, 
particularly his personal acquaintances, whose labor is naturally 
more productive of money, should, not in the way of charity, but 
on the broad ground of human, cosmopolitan civilization, sustain 
an honest perseverance in the Fine Arts, in the same way as other 
departments of human cultivation are so nobly sustained among 
us ; that work, requiring the qualities of a man of refinement, 
might be produced at least without the harrowing hell of the doubt 
of daily supplies of necessaries. Whatever the merit of my work 
may be, I can claim the honest and persevering endeavor always to 
do it as well as I could. 

It does not pay. I have tried it long, as you know, or ought to 
know. I am now straining all my faculties to get into another 
business, wherein I hope to find a decent living. 

In writing my autobiography, I shall tell how almost singly your 
conduct toward me was distinguished; how, in a city where I had 
passed almost my whole life, and where I was four or five years ago 
only a whole year and a half without any employment, I found at 
last a friend who lent me, somewhat grudgingly it must be con- 
fessed, the sum of Ten Dollaes ! who, when my brother applied to 
him for a subscription to my picture. Series of Niagara, No. 2, sup- 
posing it to be a dollar, handed a dollar to him ; but on being in- 
formed that each subscription was ten dollars, indignantly refused 
to have anything to do with it, telling my brother that I already 
owed him thirty dollars — three times the real amount, to be sure — 
yet proving that he loved to enlarge the lousy littlenesses of life, 
and that he could possibly even be brought eventually to imagine 
he had given me an order for a picture worth three hundred dollars, 
and had paid it in advance — it being more easy to change 30 into 
300 than 10 into 30 ; besides, having to his previous wealth, added 
a fortune made out of the misfortunes of his country, he could noAV 
at any rate afford to talk more liberally. 

Should this additional hallucination — giving me an order for a 
three hundred dollar picture, with payment in advance — take pos- 
session of you, I will with great pleasure mention it in my auto- 
biography ; let it be distinctly understood, however, that this is by 
no means necessary to enable me to speak in such terms of your 
generosity as its immensity demands. 

I have witnesses to prove that I inclosed Ten dollars to yiiiiv ndihrrs. 

Of late, when we pass in the street, you do not speak, but glare, 
as if you would make me feel horrible ; perhaps this letter will in- 
dicate how you succeed in that awful demonstration. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 



Introductory ; Billem Sorry's speecli treating of the Art-pioneers 
in the West; of Billy 'dams, the amateur, and Nick Littleworth, 
the patron ; the history of the Ladies' Academy of the Fine Arts 
in our town; Sorry also glorifieth Bones much, but himself much 
more. 

PART II. 

Billem Sorry, Esq., strides ahead, far in advance of his age ; 
more of Nick Littleworth ; episode about the Hon. Geo. M. Dallas ; 
history of Pretty Popkins ; Young Men's Mercantile Library Asso- 
ciation ; Numskull Norton (Norris K.j; the Scratch-club; the Cin- 
cinnati Press — its Potter-grubs, its Halstead-scrubs ; the pith of 
Dick Smith; the traitorous, the infamous Enquirer; Richard 
Crump ; Dr. John Locke ; Gen. Robert T. Lytle ; Brigadier General 
Wm. H. Lytle ; Stonewall Jackson ; Hiram Powers ; Dr. Alban 
Goldsmith. 

PART III. 

New York City ; the Union uprising of the same in 1861 ; Dar- 
ley ; Palmer; Elliot; Gotham's Scratch-club ; its Art-union ; Wet- 
more and Cozzens, two presidents of that immaculate institution ; 
how the aforesaid Cozzens cozened poor Jenny Lind ; the Tenth 
Street Studio building ; Wm. Hart ; E. Leutze ; Wm. Page ; the 
great Church's exhibitions ; critical remarks of his lady-visitors : 
(he Lord's Niagara; the "horrible" waterfalls of Europe as de- 
picted by Lord Byron ; episode on the capacity for freedom dis- 
played by the masses of the North ; their great leaders, particularly 
Major General Geo. B. McClellan, otherwise Little Mac, whilom 
commander-in-chief of the armies of the United Stales. 



CONTENTS. 



PART IV. 

Church's Niagara, Geo. L. Brown's and R. S. Duncanson's ; At- 
lantic Monthly ; the New York Tribune and its Art-editor three 
years ago ; Horace Greeley, chief freedom-monger and triumvirate 
jackass ; Edgar A. Poe ; Ralph Waldo Emerson ; Sir Isaac New- 
ton ; Fanny Wright ; advice to a young candidate for Art ; aris- 
tocracy in our town ; photography ; Littleworth's way of exam- 
ining pictures critically ; Christ-pictures will not pay ; fashion and 
friends j painting photographs for Baby-booby: advice to a young 
Art-student continued — various facts related for his edification ; 
among the rest, how I am kicked into the street for non-payment 
of rent by Dr. * * * * '■'■ ,• John H. Piatt and his per- 
jury ; a poetic flight interrupted; Read; Healy; Palmer; Ran- 
dolph Rogers ; Hawthorne ; Art in Washington ; Allston in Bos- 
ton ; Billy Powell circumventing Congress ; Page ; Leutze ; English 
Art ; Charles Francis Adams' critical pictorial acumen ; brain-fever 
of my fire-insurance friend ; Byron's profound Art-knowledge ; 
Bryant and Goddard think I can not write poetry because I'm a 
dauber ; Byron beats all descriptions of Niagara ; advice to the 
youthful Art-student continued all the while ; advertising for a pa- 
tron — protesting against a Littleworth or a Pretty Popkins though ; 
ofi"er to paint a large picture of Niagara ; offer to sell writings ; 
ofi"er to write for the coming jjresidential campaign ; Nature beau- 
tiful ; woman ; man ; the press ; the future of the press ; Dr. Sam- 
uel Johnson ; the Cause of the People to be worked for ; a con- 
cluding laugh at the Naturals. 



PART I. 

The man wlio lives in earnest is a fool ; 
Humbugs are wise and use him as a tool ; 
They, like a fungus, from the Real grow, 
Misshape its form and while few care or know, 
They get the cash, the finest women, all 
That is worth having since old Adam's fall. 

*T is well to live, till you can learn to laugh, 
Of other worlds this must be the riffraff — 
A lesson hard to get, to bear its weight ; 
Most difficult the choice, to laugh or hate ; 
But caustic mirthfulness will soon become, 
A pleasant friend, an entertaining chum. 

I fell in with the Fine Arts when a boy ; 
Some friendly warnings did not wish me joy ; 
And paint ! long, patient service thou hast met, 
By giving me no decent living yet. 
All sorts of pictures I have tried to daub, 
They sell not, and I seldom get a job. 
I also am a man who makes mudpates — 
The President of the United States, 
Thus designated T. D. Bones, Esquire, 
Sculptor, and can authority bo higher? 



10 AMERICAN ART : 

(Tremendous Dead Bones, Esquire, Sculptor, makes 

Lines so uncouth that every fiber quakes) 

To Father Abraham, whom heaven defend, 

Bones sends a note to introduce his friend — 

" Bones ! Bones! I don't know Bones!" the poor man says — 

Oppressed by treason's and corruption's ways — 

" Bones ! Bones ! Oh yes ! confound those curst Confeds — 

It's — it's — that man out West that makes mud heads !" 

That makes mud heads ! Bones ! grin ! nay, be not sore ! 

From Adam down, what has the Lord done more ? 

I court the scribbling muse now ; worse and worst ? 
Ah ! am I then by all the Fates accurst ? 
Nay, nay, to my first love I but return, 
I wooed her when a child, once more I burn 
For her, of all my friends, first, last, and best ; 
She urges me to work, gives me no rest ; 
No fear, no faith, her froward mind enchains. 
Nor hope of heaven — hell's penalties and pains — 
Much less the evil men may here inflict, 
Afi'right her will, that I must truth depict. 
Thou model female ! my undaunted muse I 
" Gro on and write ! for what have you to lose, 
E'er had, or will have? tell them what you think !" 
She cries each day, all day ; " why should you shrink !" 

What humbug choose ? so many are the sorts I 
" See ! on the Fine Arts, what enormous warts ! 
These fungi nigh their beauteous forms conceal — 
E-espond first to their piteous appeal !" 

Our country has no kings whose arms can hold. 
The artist when in death his heart grows cold ; 
(Why must an ill to good be ever nigh — 
The first removed, the other too must die) 



A SATIRE. 11 

Yet artists must die somewhere, that is sure — 
Well, let them perish as do all the poor ! 
Here, merit 's measured by the rule of cash. 
What fails in this, is deemed but worthless trash. 
When men of mark, the highest in the land. 
The names of Fine Arts do not understand. 
Their devotees may look for naught but scorn. 
To be poor devils always and forlorn. 
Read Jefferson, philosopher and sage. 
Who stamped his views on his and our own age — 
Read Jefferson, the liberal advocate 
Of science, learning, freedom in the state, 
Tells young men, traveling, they need not go 
To galleries of Art in Europe, no ; 
The useful, profitable, they must learn, 
Their country's gratitude and love to earn ! 
Yet there are men who will defy the tide, 
The time, the world, the evil powers beside ; 
Thus mulish, for posterity would carve 
A name, and long before 'tis finished, starve ; 
But Genius, such as ne'er was known before. 
Now its transcendent light on us doth pour. 
Who to the power-man, T. D. Bones, Esquire, 
Sculptor, or BiLLEM Sorry, can aspire ! 
Of their great deeds the last himself shall tell, 
My only care that I report him w^ll. 

Billem Sorry, Esq., after announcing his supereminent 
and entire ability, delivers an oration on the history of * 
Art in Cincinnati and the West, at the inauguration of 
the Pioneer Monument, executed by Tremendous Dead 
Bones, Esq., Sculptor. The oration being faithfully re- 
ported by the author. 

" Friends ! fellow-citizens ! I greet ye all ! 
Me have ye chosen, I obey your call. 



12 AMEKICAN ART: 

To utter what lies latent in each heart — 
Love, admiration, for all beauteous Art ! 
Well have ye chosen ; /, /, am The Man, 
The only man who such vast themes can span ! 
Ah, happy chance ! for seldom are combined 
The great occasion and the greater mind ! 
Assembled are we in a solemn state, 
A work of Genius to inaugurate ; 
An honor to ourselves, our sires, our land ! 
It will the wonder of the world command ! 
When I have done, yon vail we will withdraw, 
Then will you be entranced with joyous awe ! 
Then see sublime ideas to stone congealed — 
In shapes of beauty to your eyes revealed — 
All from the teeming brain of T. J). Bones, 
Esquire, Sculptor ; then, then, in thunder-tones, 
YouY voices will approve his master-mind, 
That leaves all others, barring mine, behind ! 

*' With forests clothed, dark, dusky lies the land j 
The almost unpierced gloom, how solemn, grand ! 
A prairie here and there peeps at the sun, 
And holds up flowers for him to shine upon ; 
Seldom disturbed, what silence ! eloquent ! 
Yet guarding secrets to its keeping lent — 
Whose mounds, whose walls of earth, of stone, 
Whereon those trees ten hundred years have grown ? 
No letters, hieroglyphics, giving date. 
No names of nations, builders, nor their fate ! 
One fact from their construction do we know — 
Man wars with man forever here below. 
The Indian follows, how ? when ? tell who can ! 
O'er him, now lowering, looms Ms fated ban ! 
For see ! another peers with calm, pa?e face — 
There mark dominion*s deep, determined trace ! 



A SATIRE. 13 

There mark the hatred gleaming in his eye, 

Eager to close the Red Man's destiny ! 

His heritage the Indian strove in vain, 

Strove with spasmodic fierceness to retain ; 

Too savage he, a civil knave to make — 

His sullen spirit slavery scorned to take — 

Since he could not be used, vrhy should lie live? 

A needless question, which I pray forgive. 

Restless, relentless and resistless, soon, 

A People followed the adventurous Boone. 

Insatiate, some say, was their lust of land — 

Why should they not the Continent demand ? 

Men are but brutes with larger, firmer brain — 

The strongest ever sovereignty attain ; 

It is our pride that we from sires descend, 

Whose prowess conquered what it could defend. 

But who the tale heroic has not heard. 

Of men and women who their danger shared ? 

I told it to you at our festive board, 

When on my wings, sustained, sublime, I soared, 

So far, to such unprecedented heights. 

That none could follow my exalted flights ! 

Therefore, to-day, our history of Art, 

Shall be my speech, to future times a chart. 

How glows my soul with this grand, glorious theme ! 

What facts ! more splendid than the wildest dream ! 

How swells my pride at such a wondrous land ! 

Yestern a wilderness where now I stand ! 

How soon a gloomy forest-continent 

Doth culminate in this great Monument ! 

Queen City of the West ! high, sovereign name — 

Known in thy youth to much artistic fame ! 

Then wert thou, but a score of years agone, 

A beauteous princess on her sylvan throne. 

While lofty hills, with treasures filled and crowned, 

Of stone and wood, obedient, stood around ; 



14 AMERICAN ART : 

Thy diadem, a dome of purest blue, 

Made brilliant, while it blended every hue ; 

No dark and dingy smoke, no greasy soot, 

Then tarnished colors and defiled with smut ; 

' La helle riviere,' sheen with the sun's bright beams, 

Welcomed dark Licking, Makatewa's streams ; 

Wild flowers and fruit to maidens and to boys, 

Occasion furnished for hilarious joys — 

A pastoral city may I call it, where 

Much mental culture breathed sweet country air, 

No squalid poverty shocked sight and sense, 

And cheerful labor gained its recompense. 

Here, intellect, removed from hampering rules, 

Transmitted stupidness and modern fools. 

Could its original ideas test. 

Discard authority for what is best ; 

New principles of life were thence evolved, 

And practice, doubt to certainty resolved. 

Our rich Nick Littleworth in Art thus founds, 

A rule that to his shrewdness much redounds ; 

I quote his words ; they are by far the best, 

Though in a somewhat homely phrase exprest- — 

' Grive artists work !' he cries, ' I'm no such fool ! 

G — d d — n 'em, starve 'em ! starve 'em ! that's my rule ! 

To bring them out, it is the only way, 

The shiftless, good-for-nothing dogs, I say !' 

How brightly Littleworth's example shines ! 

How well with practice he his words combines I 

Consistency— a virtue very rare — 

In this, is surely his beyond compare ! 

His house will not all through, above, below. 

Two thousand dollars worth of Fine Arts show 1 

Pictures, he says, he buys at auction, low ; 

What business tact \ on this he builds his fame, 

An honor makes of what should be a shame ! 



A SATIRE. IE 

Wide as the land his name as Patron rings, 
And Read, mellifluent, his praises sings ! 
Yet Littleworth this sum e'en deems too much, 
For though to gold all things turn at his touch, 
Yet in the poor-house doth he fear to die — 
Starvation dreads he as his destiny ! 
To he thus forced to eat of his own dish ! 
Worse to mine enemy I could not wish ! 
And I would grimly joy to know that fate 
Avenges better far than bitterest hate I 

" ' Gr— d d — n 'em, starve 'em !' this is curt and new ; 
Who fails to recognize its cheapness too ? 
And /a novel principle proclaim, 
Entitling me to everlasting fame- 
That Genius need not labor to achieve 
The greatest ends, who ever would believe, 
Till I, in law, prove my transcendent power — > 
Till Bones and Church to Art give their rich dower— 
The world stands wondering at Aurora Leigh, 
To brilliant Browning bends the knowing knee ! 
'T is by the grace of God our deeds are done ; 
We prove by them that we all labor shun. 

" Not so did they of whom you now shall know— • 
Our pioneers in Art, a goodly show. 
They diligently Nature sought to find. 
To whom she proved a mistress not unkind ; 
If one can not create, it is confest, 
To copy closely, is by far the best. 
Amongst the painters Corwine must be named, 
For faithful likenesses so justly famed ; 
Too raw the country, and his death too soon, 
To bring his talent to a brilliant noon. 
And Morgan, rising higher, never knew 
His greatest Fcope, for he died early too. 



16 AMERICAN AET: 

I knew him ; let me pause a moment here, 
And to his memory give a kindly tear ; 
A princely fellow, who could do and dare, 
Soon struck, I know not why, withi blasting care. 
Thou reachest all, thou most malignant power — 
None, none, escape thy secret, certain hour ! 
There are still others who have been asleep 
Or long or not, for whom none care to weep. 

" I turn and welcome those who live, to verse. 
With meaning pregnant and construction terse. 

"What shall I say of Jas. H. Beard and T. B. Bead? 
Their early pictures do no praises need ; 
As painters — pigmies, great although they are. 
Since their achievements in the Art of war ! 
When rebels threat the Queen of all the West 
With ravishment, and thus disturb her rest. 
Among her many mighty men of Mars. 
None made of her defense less of a farce — 
For Bacchus lent them his efficient aid, 
Of all her heroes made none less afraid ; 
Captains they were, and steadied at their posts. 
If not themselves, perhaps the warrior hosts ! 

" There are yet other names : the Frankensteins, 
(The Lord forgive the eldest all his sins) 
Though both to Nature's imitation slaves. 
The elder, precedent, opinion, braves, 
Declares that we with open eyes can see, 
Is but a stupid, childish fallacy ; 
He's mad ; of late has ta'en a fit to fight. 
And means a most satiric piece to write. 
Let not my justice, gallantry and wit, 
A Lilly Martin Spencer here omit ; 



A SATIRE. 17 

The humor of the lower life she shows, 

Wherein but few superiors she knows. 

Alonzo Douglass ! wisely hast thou done, 

A pinched existence and the Arts to shun ; 

In thy vocation, none surpass thy skill — 

This proves thy power to paint, if such thy will. 

Brannan hath labored with the brush and pen ; 

When first he wrote, he satirized some men, 

Who in their bats would " carry bricks" he said — 

They, from this demon, drink, long since have fled— 

But Brannon ! ay, how will this world turn round I 

With red-hot bricks doth Ms hat now abound ! 

" William H. Powell is the only one. 
By whom my head in paint was ever ' done '; 
He had the sense to see its noble lines ! 
To see its beauty with such strength combines ! 
Ohio's Legislature boasted then 
My membership ; ail who are present ken 
I made a most extraordinary speech — 
Then Powell paints me — my sublimest reach I 
As moves athwart the burning mountain's brow 
The black and belching smoke, my anger now 
Moves o'er my frowning front, a dun, dark glow-^ 
Beneath and through this beetling monster-mass, 
Like disemboweled flames of earth, now pass, 
Flash fiercely forth, forked lightnings from mine eyes — 
Sulphureous vapor from my nostrils flies, 
As does from Death's, when he the Pale Horse rides ; 
While, like the lava down the mountain-sides. 
My eloquence o'er all my hearers rolls. 
And burns conviction to their very souls ! 
Thus Powell painted me ; I sat perforce, 
He charged me nothing — that was quite of course ; 
But Billy's little bill I undertook 
Should pass the Legislature, hook by crook ; 



18 AMERICAN ART : 

This was, to paint a picture for the State- — • 
I got it through ; but we had fieree debate. 

" H1RA.M Powers' plastic portraiture demands, 
The highest tribute from impartial hands. 
His figures called ideal are not such— 
Of Nature imitated show too much ; 
And yet too little Nature do we find 
To satisfy the realistic mind. 
The Greek Slave ? No, I can not call it good. 
Although I wish with all my heart I could. 

" And Clevenger, thy name adorn my speech, 
Nathless the highest thou didst never reach. 
And, John L. Whetstone, thou, mine ancient friend, 
Who didst begin well nigh where others end, 
And who, like Douglass, shunned artistic woes, 
Thy name shall bring this record to a close. 

" Art breeds some people of a curious kind— 
Their character is not with ease defined : 
E-idiculous — pestiferous — -will do — 
Ye critics, amateurs, I mean you, you ! 
Thee ! leanest, lankest, longest of the tribe, 
Thee ! Billy 'dams, I glut to jeer and gibe ! 
Before our most high court that painted thing, 
Thou call'st a landscape for its trial bring ; 
Who sees such forms, such tints upon this earth- — 
Thy barrenness fore'er repeats this birth ! 
To our Art-union dost thou sell this daub ? 
To do so is no better than to rob ! 
To rob? ay, scoundrel ! in a twofold way : 
No artist, the Art-union laws did say, 
Should be an ofiicer thereof, to sell 
To it his works — the meaning 's plain and well ; 
Thou held'st an office there: thus, at that time, 
To sell thy daub to it was double crime ! 



19 



Thou wert no artist — but an amateur ? 

Bold villain ! dost thou bring excuse so poor? 

But MussET proved all this in the Gazette — 

Thou hast not dared to contradict it yet. 

Thy body is the picture of thy soul 1 

All wrinkled, shriveled, thinned into a pole ; 

'T is printed plain on thy disfigured face, 

What made it so, 's humanity's disgrace ; 

An old man, withered by his vices — what? 

It is thy character and not a blot ! 

I know that Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, 

Could drink and gamble and do worse, they say ; 

It made their work, their life, more human, broad — 

They served and were exempted by their God ! 

But thou art nothing but a wreck of vice ; 

Thy work is fuddling and to fondle dice. 

Is this to live ? yes, gamble and get drunk, 

That men may shun thee as they do a skunk — 

And wretch ! thy patriotism nobly shows I 

Into the street for rent unpaid it throws 

An absent soldier's family ; the wife. 

Of one, who guards with his thy worthless life — 

A foul-mouthed monarchist with mumping chops 

Mumbling : ' The People are but rabble' tops 

Thy physical, thy moral, mental stench ! 

What! callous yet! and wilt thou never blench? 

Is there no spot where shamelessness may feel ! 

All putrid skin ! none quick to my barbed steel ? 

'' There 's still another who deserves a niche ; 

A busy woman, but a venomous 

Her tongue has placed her far outside that pale, 
That female weakness, men will not assail. 
To reach the upper-ten how she will scheme — • 
'T is hard to rise on medicated steam ! 



20 AMERICAN AKT: 

If she at last a surly sufferance gains, 

Her cringing low a dubious place obtains. 

Her artful artlessness is wondrous skill, 

Her artless artfulness more wondrous still. 

Some think her character without a taint, 

While others know a sinner, not a saint. 

She now, since age has laid her on the shelf, 

In chastened Magdalens concerns herself. 

And brings to light, from marble, human shape, 

As skillfully as monkeys men can ape ; 

Her body 's changed to grossness and her mind, 

In correspondence does not lag behind. 

Who is this unadulterate dunghill dame ? 

Nay, nay, enough ; I will not tell her name. 

" A nonesuch peers and proves a happier theme ; 
See o'er his face sweet self-complacence stream ! 
A handsome man, a gifted connoisseur — 
His knowledge comes by Nature he is sure ! 
He says it is not study — that 's all fudge — 
A gift enables him of Art to judge ! 
Friend Karrmann also heads that knowing class, 
Who all but foreign daubs as worthless pass, 
Then purchase only when the name is great — 
Then hear them proudly and profoundly prate ! 
Calame has crazed Karrmann and Andy Burt, 
While both leave merit here without a shirt. 
'T is true, they know no better, do their best ; 
But that I'll also say of all the rest. 

" Poor, punning Peyton Symmes I will not blame ; 
And if a comma could his wrath inflame. 
His genial nature pleaded for the pest. 
How he was wont to haunt that artists' nest, 
Famous Foote's Row, of yore their favorite seat, 
And others who their rent could never meet : 



A SATIRE. * 21 

For FooTE was easy, generous, and rich, 
And let them pay or not, no matter which. 

" I love to praise my kind whene'er I can— - 
I love to say he is or was a man ! 
Samuel E, Foote I venture to record 
As one who found acceptance with the Lord. 
With him, his kindness did not pass away — 
Some can remember if they can not pay. 
No youthful energies by him were crushed, 
No cheeks with helpless indignation flushed, 
Because a business man must have his dues — 
But when another stepped into his shoes, 
His fostering How of Art, of Physic, Law — - 
Ah ! when the greedy Griffon struck his paw 
Into the marrow of its hapless set, 
And clutched the little money they could get — 
When Foote must sell and Griffon bought, alas ! 
Their doom was fixed ; whom would not he harass, 
Who for vile lucre did not spare his blood — 
Just indignation ! whelm him in thy flood ! 
A man whose sphere chills with Siberian cold, 
Whose charity is show, whose love is gold, 
And gluttony, where he his fill can feast — 
Thus one with method makes himself a beast, 
Another rises to the gods above. 
And both do nothing but what best they love. 

" Next Stetson, of Art-union frauds the prince, 
Reduced to poverty and feeling since. 
Art-union, bank, both to perdition went, 
Of which he was the skillful president. 
What harm, if widows, orphans, were made poor, 
His shares were few, his wealth still all secure j 
At last fatuity liis money lost — 
For wanting more, mid breakers he was tost j 



22 AMEEICAN art: 

Of all his work 't is tJie surprising thing — 
Nor do I grieve that I can have this fling ! 
This Stetson here, and Wetmore in New York, 
Art-Tinions used for vile and villainous work j 
The People freely paid, true Art to speed, 
But in its name would not corruption feed j 
The growing popularity of Art, 
These rascals stifled at its very start. 

" Academies of Art were born and died ; 
To rear one in our midst, all skill defied ; 
The strongest-lived by ladies was conceived, 
That they miscarried can it be believed ? 
Yet proved it an abortion like the rest, 
And all because 't was born without being drest. 
It may be well to show how this was done, 
That future times the like mishap may shun. 
Nick Littleworth's new rule was followed much ; 
Drawbacks it had — the case is ever such. 
Without th' Antique and the old Masters' aid, 
No artists, fit for aught, can now be made ; 
But how can they this far-oif fountain reach, 
When we do practice more than e'en we preach. 
This ' starve 'em !' how to go, e'en if they would? 
In this dilemma long the subject stood — 
The horns of a dilemma to divert, 
The ladies are proverbially expert — ■ 
' We'll bring th' Antique and the old Masters here ; 
Not the originals, if they 're too dear — 
But perfect copies that for such will pass.' 
They promptly moved, collected cash, en masse, 
Sent Mrs. E. to Europe for the rest. 
When she returned, she brought^ — but oh, ye blest ! 
' What ! these indecent, naked fellows, Gods ! 
These trulls are Goddesses? who were the dods, 



A SATIRE. 23 

When did they live, who made these nasty things !' 

Thus, thus each woman horror shriller rings ! 

One big, big, fat one, throws aloft both hands, 

Exuding sweets from all her pores she stands. 

Convulsed she gasps, she chokes, she can not speak — 

And though her terror other outlets seek. 

Too great the shock, her forces must knock under — 

Her bosom's billows almost burst asunder. 

With short — still shorter — shorter — jerks — they heave, 

Till whew ! with one long shriek all sense takes leave, 

She faints, she plumps upon the dirty floor, 

And though some loose her stays behind, before, 

They crowd around and stifle her still more ; 

The broad and bulky bosom is laid bare — 

Ah ! what a shocking, sickening sight is there ! 

Some things vfill happen, why, God only knows — 

Must fate mock modesty in her dread throes ? 

Alas ! alas ! but that 's the way it goes ! 

Bosom exposed, and farther down in front — 

What shall I say that will not be too blunt — 

Flat on her back, her hoops throw up an arch. 

Through which a legion of lewd loves could march ; 

Monstrous mishap mock-modesty befell, 

To spare not e'en its very citadel ! 

" These sights and sounds combine as rare a treat, 
As miserable mortals here may meet : 
Outlandish e'en mid this odd scene, this din. 
Yon maid of years — unspecked by soil or sin — 
Stares silent, long, with mouth and eyes — ' what's this — ' 
She says at last, ' here's something quite amiss ! 
It is unnatural I know, I'm sure ! 
I never saw — my memory is not poor — 
I never saw the like in my born days !' 
Her neighbor listens, stares at her and says : 
' Poor thing ! you have no husband yet to know, 
That that is right and just exactly so. 



24 AMERICAN ART : 

These statutes show the men are not like us, 

And that's the reason we make all this fuss !' 

The joke is good, too good indeed to keep, 

And so it quickly through the crowd doth creep ; 

The uproar lulls, a titter runs around, 

And then the walls with laughter loud resound ! 

The maiden stares still more, her face abashed. 

Is yet with angry, questioning doubting dashed — 

She finds she is the focus of all eyes — 

Their wicked looks infuriate — she cries : 

* I am like other people — -just like you ! 

I wish to Grod those curious shapes were true, 

And I could be just like them ! then you'd see, 

How I would serve you if you came near me I' 

Her crinoline a circle now describes. 

Then backward flies a tangent at their gibes, 

Groes through the door at a terrific rate, 

And leaves the others to deliberate. 

Deliberate ! there was much pro and con ; 

While some insisted to put breeches on, 

The liberals favored Adam's simple dress — 

The savage sneered : you could not well have less ! 

The music-motions of a lady's tongue. 

Are not perpetual, as has been sung : 

The liberals for the fig-leaf gained the day. 

And a committee is now on its way. 

That Mr. Fazzi may amend th' Antique, 

And mitigate the grossness of the Greek ! 

' Ah, Mr. Fazzi ! those — those— casts — you know — 

We want them covered with a fig-leaf, so ' 

And there they halted — ' What ! what ! how is that ? 

You want all over covered and for what ?' 

' Oh, not all over, Mr. Faz — ' ' Then where ?' 

' Oh, what a simpleton he is ! why tli&re P 

Directed by a desperate parasol, 

He comprehends at last — ' oh, that is all ? 



A SATIRE. 25 

I will do anything for you Madame — 
What curious peoples ! oh, what fools ! oh d — n !' 
He put leaves on ; and though he chuckled much, 
Swore more while giving his completing touch. 

" At the Mechanics' Institute these casts now are ; 
The fighting Gladiator's quivering buttocks, bare, 
With all appurtenances dependent there, 
Are quite conspicuous from the street below — 
Trouble begun once none the end can know — 
This stumbling-block will rise up still I find — 
Come, Mr. Fazzi, fig-leaves for behind ! 

" Here brightly shines our Little Nick again ; 
In chastity a leader among men, 

From Powers' Grreek Slave he turned with great disgust — 
The marble figure, nude, created lust ! 

*' Such things the ladies from abroad then brought, 
That without pay our artists here be taught ? 
How frequently are good intentions foiled, 
And great things by the mean and petty spoiled ' 
The ladies from the very first somehow. 
With these poor artists got into a row — 
They slapped their free door in the artists' faces — 
Of course with all appropriate grimaces — 
They cried : ' You shan't get in, if you don't pay !' 
And so these artists stay out to this day, 
And have not learnt a thing in Art they say. 

" 'T was my intention to contrast the Real — 
The lesser with the greater Art, th' Ideal — 
And Grenius prove another word for fate, 
That needs not industry to make it great — 
'Twas my intent to show I do not work — 
That I ne'er study where the gist may lurk — 
The rules of evidence — all — all — despise, 
For which some lawyers will read out their eyes — 



26 AMERICAN ART: 

That in no ease my cases I prepare — 

My Genius trust the jury to o'erbear — 

But it is late and I must stay my speech, 

Just when the grandest sentences I reach. 

I never do get done ; it is my fate. 

To be unfinished and forever late ; 

I do not doubt but thus I shall miss heaven 

When sounds the latest trumpet and be driven . 

To seek salvation with a generous devil, 

Whose realm all comers enter without cavil — 

" Remove the vail ! Bones ! from thy awful height, 
Blaze ! blaze ! through time thy brilliant beacon light !" 

As this mighty creation of the arboresque and statu- 
esque order is unvailed to the thousands watching with 
eager eyes, they burst into a shout that shakes the earth ; 
the cannon booms ; Mr. Phlipps surveys it, falls down 
and worships ! 



27 



. PART II. 

THE AUTHOR ONCE MORE SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF. 

See ! yonder Billem Sorry strides ahead ! 
In front of th' age his long legs make his tread ! 
And yet he fails like me, like all I find, 
Of just appreciation from his kind. 
Some get too little ; many far too much — 
How eagerly all at the phantom clutch ! 
Yet are we all, whatever we may seem, 
Great, greater, greatest in our own esteem ; 
A strengthening plaster, efficacious, this, 
For all the promises of life we miss. 

Ere I this city leave for larger game, 
For greater humbugs though not greater shame, 
I have some other withering words to speak ; 
For once, forever, will I not be meek ! 
Who are these men whose humors I must take ? 
What fellows they, whose frown should make me quake ? 
I love to love ; but I love too, to hate ! 
Because they're rich my case I must not state ? 
For any cause be silent while they prate ? 
I must still stand while still my cheeks they smite ? 
By heaven ! I'll turn and to the death I'll fight ! 



28 AMERICAN ART I 

I've long been ravenous as a famished bear— 
I've waited, watched, and worked till I could tear ! 
With gentle pats I'll paw the thing I like — 
With hungry hate the hated thing I'll strike ! 

Once more that ragged, dirty little man, 
That son of squat St. Crispin I must scan, 
A farewell word to Littleworth must give, 
A word in season since we both still live. 
He knows the crooked ways much to possess, 
Pure, precious grapes to poisonous wine can press, 
And make some scribblers whom he soaks with drink, 
A benefactor blaze him at his wink. 

How vast are not his views ! to turn a penny, 
His combinations equal are to any ; 
He first gets Dr. Mackay steeped enough, 
In th' Illustrated London News this stuff 
In the most choice of thundering terms to puff: 
Then Nick packs up some of this vinous ware. 
Sends — how that deep -dyed Democrat will swear- — 
Sends it to George M. Dallas, Minister, 
From all these great United States, to her 
August, puissant. Majesty Brittanic — 
" He might as well take me for a mechanic ! 
What ! make me a commission merchant, Me, 
Minister Plenipotentiary !" 

Cries Dallas, while his eyes pop from their sockets : — 
"/take these bottles with me in my pockets — 
Thus to state-dinners of these nobles go — 
When asked to wine, pull out my bottle — oh — 
May 't please your Gi-race, first take with me a swig — 
By G — d ! as soon dance then and there a jig ! 
/ am to serve these nobles with his wine — 
/ tell them when they come with me to dine, 
That orders sent to Cincinnati, 0., 
Will be filled forthwith with punctilio-— 



A SATIRE. 29 

My Lord ! my little per centage then, you know 

With all the twists of trade I am to trick 'em 

Were he but here ! out-doors my man should kick him ! 
But first, by heaven ! I do believe I 'd lick him ! !" 
And stately Dallas his fierce anger churns, 
Lifting his loftiness this thing he spurns : — 
Did Dignity e'er suffer such mayhem ? 

And Democratic Dallas is its gem 

Our Littleworth here failed to gain his aim ; 

But all great men sometimes have done the same, 

With us it did not dim his fulgent fame — 

Large anecdotes they still give of his wit, 

And we still laugh because there 's not a bit ; 

He is so queer, original, they cry, 

And cite as proof his curious charity : 

He helps but those whom no one else relieves. 

The Grod-and-man-abandoned whores and thieves ? 

I know not who it is such stuff believes ; 

If this helps any one it helps himself, 

It is a cunning trick to keep his pelf. 

If he some Cyprians succor in great straits, 

Some conscience haply still his soul berates — 

They call it charity, a novel touch 

To help the poor things when he 's made them such ! 

What tales obscene habitually he tells. 

That prove whereon his nature fondly dwells ; 

For Art, for all the subjects termed refined, 

Here have we then a pure, ingenuous mind ! 

Say not that I assault an imbecile, 

A crazed old man ; do not to me appeal 

To stay my hand from one who 's near his goal — 

Did he^ when / was helpless, d — n his soul ? 

Did he^ a man of fifty then (a time 

When passion 's calm, and judgment in its prime), 

Did he attack a poor, nigh friendless boy, 

Did he pursue him with malignant joy 



30 AMERICAN art: 

To crush liim, all these years, or did he not? 
I had no voice till now when near his rot — 
Now, scorn and study both have loosed my tongue, 
By none so well his requiem can be sung ! 
I hope he has enough sense left to read, 
And feel how his blind malice bears him seed j 
Th' advantage 's with him yet ! his course is run ; 
His hate reached me when mine was but begun ; 
(I know no cause ; he 's full of quirks and kinks — 
It does not matter — I '11 not trace their links) 
I do not know that he has hurt me much — 
I doubt the fact — not that his will was such. 
Why from my wrath this fellow then exempt ? 
And yet I can dismiss him with contempt. 

Ha ! does he die ere this is put in print ? 
The devil take it, for the devil 's in 't. 
Perhaps the one I wanted most to whip, 
As I would swoop him up, gives me the slip ; 
There must be future life ! see ! at me still ! 
The grave abates not his malignant will ! 
A member of the bar in former days. 
His death adjourns the court — my case delays- — 
Victorious to the end ! for he knows well, 
That I will never follow him to hell. 

My rusty hat I pull o'er all I know ; 
Into a pocket thrust each hand and go ; 
The solitude I love, leave now and then 
To learn the little ways of little men : — 
Gro to the street and at their doings look — 
Bent earthward, how they sweat and swear and crook ! 
I gaze aloft ! there all is still and broad — 
Then feel as if perhaps there was a Grod. 
I can not stop this further to define- — 
Come ! to the north-east corner, Fifth and Vine : 



A SATIRE. 31 

Dry goods to sell that lucky corner pays ; 

There precious pranks now Pretty Popkins plays ! 

Poor fellow ! riches turn the brain he has, 

And make him quite forget what once he was. 

It is but little more than fifteen years — 

Ay ! since a woman came to me in tears, 

In widow's weeds, and told a harrowing tale ; 

/ was romantic, young ; she^ poor and pale — 

Her husband's daubs I promised to complete, 

That starving children might be glad and eat ; 

A wicked man had done her wrong, she said — 

I snubbed the man and risked a broken head. 

This Popkins is her son, grown rich and rude, 

Ripe, though not ready, for my scornful mood ; 

He recks not, rough to ride o'er me and mine — 

(Ah, Popkins ! wilt thou always feel so fine ?) 

Assuming, overbearing, insincere. 

This hypocrite a Patron would appear ! 

For Art his cunning doth grand schemes devise, 

All specious and all meant to blind our eyes ; 

Public proposals to the Scratch-club sends. 

That he well knows e'en there will find no friends — 

From earth to heaven ! man's spirit spans the whole ! 
Yet small the space that sometimes holds his soul ! 
All things are Grod's ; from low to lower Muse, 
The lower still to sing do not refuse ; 
There is a bug — the bed-bug — loathsome thing ! 
How little ! yet with poisonous stink and sting ! 
A shuddering horror feel it o'er you creep — 
From out your clothes, your skin, your life you'd leap — 
Grive gold and fame, and woman, wine and wit — 
Give anything but to get rid of it— 
Thus Popkins' peevish pettiness annoyed, 
And for a little while my calm alloyed. 



32 AMERICAN ART : 

Turn where you will, stupid presumption reigns, 
And ill-bred ignorance scant sense enchains. 
The Young Men's Mercantile Association, 
The Library, affords an illustration : 
Where have you put that bust of John McLean ? 
Emasculated are you ere you 're men ? 
I do not ask why to some hole 't was moved : 
The fact your moral cowardice has proved ; 
Some potent idiot its truth reviles — 
Your silly sycophancy bows and smiles — 
When a malicious meddler says you must, 
That burly thing by Bones supplants a bust. 
That looks a man and by a man was made ! 
Of what you are and know, this gives the grade — 
Fit for such fools are mud heads by a Bones ! 
I greet you, youngsters, three times three, with groans ! 

(Come, will you hire me to deliver this. 
Since I appreciate your auspices ?) 

Some more sweet samples since my hand is in : 
A half-made-up, a kind of sooterkin, 
A stagnant, sloppy sort of thick and thin, 
A Next-to-Nothing now my numbers nudge : 
It poetry and paint presumes to judge : 
It uninvited came into my den. 
And damned, because I was not present then, 
My dumb, deserted and defenseless daubs : — 
The breech of this poor sneak Correction cobs. 
I wrote the facts in detail at the time, 
Th' ex-captain's character and looks in rhyme ; 
Some publisher can have it very cheap : 
I'll make the drawings — then this chap will sneap — 
NoRRis R. Norton, numskull and negation. 
Stick up to public view for admiration ! 



A SATIRE. 

I. have a life-long friend, a woman too ; 
I painted her when still our years were few ; 
The picture showed the head, neck, hands, and arms, 
The dress revealed, yet covered, other charms. 
This souvenir regards she not a whit, 
The latest fashion or a frame to fit ; 
She cuts the head and neck out, oval shape, 
(That seems the fashion now her whim would ape) 
The rest is rubbish ; I look on and smile : 
Obtuseness so profound must wrath beguile. 
This is no isolated case ; it is not rare, 
But always found 'mong those we call The Fair. 

Thus Vandalism treads into a waste 
The whole domain of cultivated taste. 
Yet shall we wonder if abroad we find 
An ignorant, conceited, ruthless mind. 
When artists little work and little know 
And thus the weeds that choke them help to grow — 
AYhen those who boast of Art with so much stress, 
Are noted for the little they possess ? 
Where is The Beauteous Truth to find a place, 
When her own votaries are blind and base ? 
The Scratch-club do you tell me I forget. 
That guzzling, gormandizing, smutty set — 
Whose president is Billy 'dams or Bones — 
Whose artist-members almost all are drones — 
Whose only merit, merit is to steal — 
Whose clumsy thefts mean ignorance reveal — 
For none of them the human form can draw — 
They can abide The Beautiful ? oh, pshaw ! 
In their foul air The Beauteous Truth can grow ? 
My God ! no ! no ! now and forever, no ! ! 

With facts like these agrees our groveling Press ; 
So low its level, could it well be less ? 



34 AMERICAN art: 

How changed from Hammond's bold, straightforward days I 

Did lie have mole-like, shrinking, devious ways ? 

I cherish him who to a boy was kind, 

But honor more his honest, manly mind ; 

How coursed through the G-azette his pungent pith ! 

A " cut-throat Calvinist," one Eichard Smith, 

(I quote Charles Hammond's words) now crab-like creeps 

Low at the base of Hammond's lofty steeps. 

Potter, proprietor, supreme, profound. 

Sticks his Commercial in the muddy ground, 

With Halstead cattle works his treadmill round. 

Once Henry Reed was eloquent and right, 

Though but a meteor flashing through the night — 

A night still growing darker every hour — - 

Increasing ever too in baneful power — 

A night of dullness having still no end — 

Which nothing seems to freshen or to mend — 

Not when Eebellion rears its horrent face. 

Is there a line above the commonplace. 

'T is fit such papers humbugs praise in xlrt — 

It is of their own character a part — 

'T is fit their scribblers should the truth abuse—- 

It is to them quite strange, quite monstrous news ; 

That bad may still have worse, will gain assent : 

As human bodies must their ordure vent, 

So bodies social organs do require, 

Whose functions in their nature are no higher ; 

'T is fit therefore, though all in dullness meet, 

A traitorous Enquirer be the filthy sheet. 

The refuse of mankind, its scurviest hogs, ' 

Illiterate, scurrilous and drunken progs, 

Envenomed with malignant spite still more. 

The more they feel their state can not be low'r — 

Their sloth can there beslubber and bespew, 

The patient work of men who reach The True. 



A SATIRE. 35 

One moment — James J. Faran, Wash. M'Lean— 
You've only felt the pricking of my pen. 
In your Enquirer were my daubs abused — 
You see how well I've been with that amused. 
Here I had quit you ; but the Public Wrong 
You daily do, to pillory I long. 
Now with a low-born and a lecherous leer, 
At chastity of soldiers' wives you sneer ; 
Then to your daily walk of life appeal — 
By Public Indignation struck, you reel, 
You meanly skulk behind the man you hire ; 
Your daily walk ! do you not kindle fire, 
Hell's fire, with purchased, prostituted pen, 
To help the devil blast man's hopes again ? 
Your daily walk ! you do not drink, whore, gamble, 
And therefore righteously you claim to amble? 
Bold, barefaced, blustering scorn of Right and Sense, 
Lies little, low, unscrupulous, immense, 
A cowardly, a covert course, to blind 
The weak, the ignorant, the trusting mind — 
The villainous scum into a horde to band, 
Still more to spread the riot in the land — 
This is your daily walk, a hellish walk ; 
'T is this of which you with such unction talk ; 
To rebels tender, chicken-hearted, meek, 
While with the Union soldiers' blood you reek ; 
Patient and law-abiding is The Right, 
Forbearing still, when Law would have it smite. 
Or you would tread the air in mortal fright. 
Your daily walk 's to teach your sons your treason ! 
If their bad-blooded brains could e'er grow reason, 
And then meet with your record in this strife. 
Would they not hide in their own blood the knife, 
Which you struck at the struggling nation's life ! 

If, ignorant, a noble woman marry 
One of your brood ; if she his brat should carry 



36 AMERICAN ART: 

Into this world, and then learn whence it sprung — 
From treason execrated though unhung — 
Who 's there to say, this woman be to blame 
To dash brat's brains out ere it do the same ? 

Ay, I had quit you, but the Public Wrong, 
Cried to impale you on a higher prong. 
Could I but spit you where the world would see 
Your carcasses through all eternity ; 
Where, should men's scorn your quivering flesh consume, 
Your bones would blazon your unburied doom ; 
Your eyeless sockets gleam and glare within, 
Your gumless teeth would hideously grin, 
Still animate with your most monstrous sin ! 

I will believe this life an episode — 
I will believe there is a blest abode — 
I will believe the brave abide above — 
I will believe that there we still can love — 
I will believe if here I lose a friend — 
There, there, my joy with him will have no end ! 
Ah, could I speak the tenderness I feel, 
Could tell how softly it doth o'er me steal. 
When to the stars my moistening eyes I strain, 
There of my friends who 're gone a glimpse to gain ? 
Yet on those stars what natives may be found. 
In prejudice and privilege fast bound, 
Who '11 not to them, as foreigners, unbend, 
G-rudging, like men, the room they think they lend ? 

I am not old and yet almost alone, 
I hardly hear a once familiar tone. 
From my stern purpose let me turn aside, 
But for one moment let me cease to chide, 
That I may syllable the praise of some, 
Whose friendship ceased but with the life to come ; 



37 



That I may honor others living yet, 

And show that kindness I would not forget. 

Once Richard Crump, thy face was by me limned ; 
I gaze and see the picture's eyes undimmed ; 
I see therein enthusiasm shine 
Resembling what I always saw in thine ; 
I will not then these pictured orbs despise, 
Since they bring back to me thy vivid eyes. 
Of all the men of work I ever knew, 
In any path of labor men pursue, 
None were like thee with holy fire consumed, 
None were like thee to disappointment doomed. 
By thee, to paint, was deemed delight divine, 
Yet must thou do far other work to — dine. 
When dread despair with damning drink I drowned, 
When I in God and man no refuge found, 
Thy letters gave me places of sweet rest, 
Relieved the torture that my soul compressed. 
My friend beloved ! since thou hast gone from hence, 
I 've known disgust, defiant and intense, 
Despised despair, and working, battling strong, ^ 
Have burst at last into indignant song. 
I had, oh God ! so weary grown of paint ! 
I bound, released from some accursed restraint ; 
If thou wert here, thy faith in me would laud 
The work I do, and my intent applaud. 
The flesh no longer feels its need to die — - 
Now swells and soars my spirit, sweeps on high- 
Then, softened, mournful, melts to melody, 
Subdued and saddened, seeking still for thee ! 

John Locke 1 his name lends luster to my page ; 
Few are his equals as a man and sage ; 
For science subtle agencies he sought, 
And matter to a resolution brought, 



SB AMERICAN ART : 

Yet never ceased to treat it as a whole — 

He ne'er forgot, nor robbed it of its soul ; 

Nor while the what, the why, and how, he booked, 

Did he neglect to learn how it all looked. 

All works of Art with interest he viewed, 

Nor shocked with criticism coarse and rude ; 

Nor did he run to feel if they were slick, 

As was the way and test of Little Nick ; 

But at the proper distance sought to find, 

Intent and silent, there the painter's mind. 

A student all his life, he knew the cost — 

If good — each touch a thought not to be lost. 

His praise, if it was gained, was something worth, 

Because 't was thoughtful observation's birth. 

One of the brightest jewels in thy crest. 

Queen City ! though thou seem'st not so impressed ; 

A mind of the first magnitude, it moved 

E'en here among the stars whose paths it proved ; 

It needed not death's intermeddling care, 

Not robbing us on earth, to place it there ! 

And not the least among the many dead, 
KoBERT T. Lytle sunlight on me shed. 
The People loved him as their advocate, 
Whose words could crush aristocratic hate ; 
The People loved him for so large a heart. 
That all the world could come and claim a part. 
E'en party hate must in his presence melt, 
And hate a hatred it no longer felt. 
But of this name I cherish more than one ; 
I loved the father, and I love the son. 
The last with high-toned chivalry leads men. 
Who fight to make their country one again ; 
Though of his wounds he scarcely yet is healed, 
Once more the foremost is he on the field. 



39 



The dying moon rises slowly from its bed 
As if 't were weary of the life it led ; 
Darksome and gloomy looms midnight's expansion, 
Sad, somber shadow dims the Lytle mansion. 
Mantled more darkly, moaning move the trees 
Their bending branches to the blighting breeze ; 
And restless and uneasy is each leaf. 
Chattering as if there was no other grief, 
Save what each tells with such a mournful sound, 
Or still aloft, or flickering o'er the ground ; 
Soughing in sorrow so, October wind. 
Seeking, like me, communion now to find. 
With loved and lofty spirits, once true men. 
Whom we as mortals ne'er shall see again ? 
With reverence I bare and bow my head — 
They may be near, the good, the gallant dead— 
William Haines Lytle ! my friend's son, my friend, 
How premature, yet glorious is your end ! 
I will not weep, though I am very sad — 
I can not joy, and yet I should be glad — 
How I have loved these rebels hitherto — 
Shall I not love them more for killing you ? 
Without your blood these monsters were not sated— 
Oh, I have learnt how much they must be hated ! 
What bound you so to me you did not know? 
'T is very plain, quite plain why it was so — 
When Andrew Jackson stood in yonder door, 
On his way home, to battle thence no more, 
I was a stripling in the foremost crowd, 
'Grainst will and wont to push or to be loud ; 
Your father with impatience cleared a space, 
But passed me by as I looked in his face : 
He knew me not when afterward we met, 
Or, if he did, he chose it to forget ; 
But I remember that sweet courtesy, 



40 AMERICAN ART: 

And that he always was most kind to me — 

God bless him ! generous to a fault was he ! 

This, this it was that bound you to me fast, 

For I loved him and his — you, unsurpassed. 

For kindness, courtesy and courage — nay, 

Can I no longer keep these tears away — 

Ah, it is hard to bear and must be borne — 

And yet I should be glad — why must I mourn — 

For you have died for that great cause that gives 

His liberty to every man that lives ! 

The name of Lytle will be linked with those 

For whom the righteous heart with ardor glows : 

Our people feel you lost in your life's morn ; 

In Cincinnati, here, where you were born, 

They thronged to bless you, sigh their last farewell, 

As military pomp, funereal bell. 

Buried their hero whom they loved so well ! 

'Twixt leaves still restless, 'gainst its sheen so darkling, 
The now risen moon, see ! like star-clusters sparkling ! 
So through earth's tremulous and midnight gloom, 
You with the Griorious now our souls illume ; 
The diamond-stars eternal peer above — 
The pearl-clouds come to life with light of love — 
Brighter and greener grows the purple blue. 
Like human nature when men rise like you — 
Like him who was your noble father's guest 
As he passed on to find his final rest — 
Like Andrew Jackson — hail ! all ye, ye Blest ! 

When in the grave the Union giants slumber, 
Then slavery springs the free North's days to number ; 
When lived a Jackson, Webster and a Clay, 
Was for rebellion no auspicious day. 
Jackson ! well traitors wait till he is dead — 
They knew what hg would do from what he said — 



41 



I but beheld his specter near the grave, 

Yet still erect, still competent to save ; 

Jackson ! what honor thronged erst round this name ! 

Now, now, alas, how great should be its shame ! 

Now its renown a Stonewall Jackson shares — 

Stonewall ! fit title that mad monster bears, 

Who last the bandage from that ulcer tore, 

That damnable, disgusting, running sore, 

Thousands of years have not, not yet healed o'er — 

That proneness of mankind to love the lash, 

If but laid on them with a certain dash. 

Complacently to lick then the gangrene, 

Thinking the chronic sore they thus keep clean — 

God ! Christ ! Religion ! and Civilization ! 

Hear ye those shouts of ardent admiration. 

For onslaughts on what you teach as the Right, 

Because the villain does not fear to fight ! 

How well it works, this Christ-machinery 

For hoisting into heavenly company — 

In Right, in Wrong, how well are they not drilled, 

When they lament this slavery's bloodhound killed ! 

E'en Whittier tells us we must drop a tear 

Upon this stenchy Stonewall Jackson's bier. 

Because he spared a fool, old Barbara, 

While he was rushing on to — ha ! ha ! ha ! 

Only to rend his country, nothing more ! 

Dog-demon ! pious ! till his head is sore ! 

How he with Calvin-venom men inspires : 

How he their brains, their hearts besotted, fires : 

Plow he their blinded fury then impels 

On their own country's love with hideous yells — 

Hear how the fool-fiends bound with blasting breath — 

They must be in at their own Freedom's death ! 

To be there first, how hotly Stonewall rides — 

And can it be that G od with such sin sides ? 



42 AMERICAN ART : 

No ! no ! the evil giant soon is blown — 

He rides to death — hosanna ! 't is his own ! 

Tears ! t^ars ! ah, yes, tears I will freely shed, 

But tears of unmixed joy that he is dead ! 

Call me ferocious in vindictiveness — 

Pugh ! pugh ! there 's this pugnacious scoundrel less ; 

This unmatched executioner, he whom 

Hell surely holds if hell for him had room ; 

Inscrutable, he ever lived at all, 

Or since he did, with powder and with ball, 

Rather than at the rope's-end he should fall ! 

Look at the picture of his precious face : 
There, not one line of nobleness you trace ; 
No, no ; the truly noble are with us, 
They must be — all the great, good, noble, generous. 
In Europe, those who fear this nation's power, 
Therefore of its division hope the hour. 
And say so honestly, we may respect, 
Although we think their fears are incorrect ; 
But those who, gluttonous of privilege, 
Keep the herd brutes, make of their backs a bridge. 
And then o'er life's morasses dry-shod stride — 
Legions of liars, and of fools beside — 
And, by the Lord, these do turn up in schools — 
They trample on all decent, righteous rules — 
They bellow, bluster, blunder, loud and long — 
The world is old enough to know what's wrong — ■ 
Self-evident 's the justice of our cause. 
Founded on Nature's clear, inherent laws ] 
Those who our cause's righteousness deny, 
Can know but little, or they know they lie ; 
" Plain people," said our honest President, 
Plain people need on this no argument. 

All heads, all hearts, clear, true, just, generous, 
In this great contest must, must be with us ; 



43 



They need not tell me therefore, Hiram Powers, 

You with your country are in these dread hours ; 

I love to hear it though and send you greeting — 

Here, in Ohio, we just had a meeting : 

The People, we, the mass, the common herd, 

On our aifairs, for they are ours, conferred : 

You lived with us once ; with delight you'll thrill, 

When told how we expressed our sovereign will. 

A fact significant here let me note : 

Many, who seldom did before, now vote. 

Now, since they hear the devil's lusty roar, 

They gather at the polls, his friends to floor. 

Not much we said ; but paper-billets dropped, 

By which the cause with fresh support we propped ; 

Who '11 now hope that we ever will consent 

To these United States' dismemberment? 

Do we not know how Italy was torn. 

For many centuries ere we were born ? 

For Unity, have we not cheered her struggle — 

Like gawks we '11 gape while ours from us they juggle? 

We only read, write, cypher ; that 's enough, 

And we know well why we elect John Brough ; 

Let hatred jabber ; let it slander sputter, 

We know on which side of our bread is butter. 

And so I greet you, Powers, with glad, glad tidings ] 
There have not been, there will not be, backslidings ; 
State-sovereignty I fear and hate- 
But our Ohio is a glorious State ! 
Since that dog DoUGLAS, dead, and, I hope, damned, 
Disinterested patriotism shammed, 
Since the Missouri Compromise was broken, 
Unfalteringly for Freedom it hath spoken. 
To love the whole land — ^state-pride of that kind— 
With such there is no special fault to find. 



44 AMEEICAN art: 

Ohio, to whom G-od gave sucli great beauty, p 

How Jiandsomely its cliildren do their duty 1 
Its gentle hills and vales methinks I see 
Waving with living, joyful sympathy ; i 

A quiet pride peep from those prairie nooks, < ^ 

Rippling more swiftly all its streams and brooks, 
Their eyes flash back to heaven more grateful looks ; 
The trees don a more gorgeous autumn gear, 
Though thousand' thousand-tinted every year ; 
From its sweet river to its ocean-lake, 
Nature inanimate I hear awake — 
Through the vast forests is a murmur moving — 
Each leaf and twig 's ambitious of approving, 
And blessing spirits breathe a softening haze 
O'er the peerless sun's unclouded blaze — 
Oh, Hiram Powers ! I do not envy you 
Young Italy's soft winds and heaven so blue ! 

Here in Ohio too those busts you made, 
Extraordinary, of the highest grade ; 
Who in primeval wilderness would seek 
The power, the finish, of the ancient Grreek ? 
And if from father Eckstein you obtained, 
What men in centuries have only gained-^ 
Those simple rules without which Genius blunders : 
(Born, bred 'mong Indians, you had made no wonders) 
And if a stray cast showed the mystery. 
From which what had been done your eyes could see, 
Though requisite, what would have been all these, 
If ^ou had not been there their power to seize, 
With giant-genius lift unto men's sight. 
In wild woods. Sculpture to its utmost height ? 
Do let me thank you for those priceless treasures 
That are to me among my greatest pleasures. 
I 'm proud now of its touch, that master-hand, 
As it my head's dimension gently spanned ; 



45 



And as I sit here, undisturbed, alone, 
I look back on the years from which we 've grown, 
And since I 'm told, in classic Italy, 
You spoke my name, that you remembered me, 
I may remind you of your courtesy. 
And Doctor Alban Goldsmith's too — both kind — 
He 's now in that land none here live and find — 
How good he was I did not realize, 
To sit for me, a boy who untaught tries 
To make a bust, and for the first time too ; 
But I know now how it all was ; and you 
Quit your immortal work at his request, 
To see a boy's beginning at the best ; 
Encouragement, direction too, to give. 
That are remembered ever as I live. 
Then Spurzheim was in vogue : examining my head, 
" Here 's not much veneration," laughingly you said : 
Yet I revere the Doctor, you, as men, 
Than whom, for pencil, chisel, or the pen, 
Handsomer, higher, has not all the race ; 
My mud head of him fell down on its face, 
And with a big French brandy bottle made a crash- 
Had but the Doctor had, or you not needed, cash ! 
There was a glorious subject for your skill — 
Nature ne'er made a finer and ne'er will ! 
Her best art 's rare ; your art is rarer still : 
I must ask why did you not make a bust 
Of this most splendid head that now is dust — 
With highest Nature highest Art entwine, 
That years in thousands may not now combine. 

His picture gazes at me as I write : 
I painted it three twelve-months past, not quite : 
Then with his prime had fled his full, dark hair — 
Some richly-tinted gray locks lingered there. 
Encircling like a halo that grand dome. 
Wherein a god might choose to make his home; 



46 AMERICAN ART 

His beard, now full, was still more richly gray : 

There every tint seemed lurking with its ray. 

His eye calm, clear ; his glowing color too, 

The freshness all r(3tained it ever knew. 

Where moves the Hudson's great erratic will, 

Where, distant 'gainst the sky lean the Kaatskill, 

Behold the Doctor standing on hia lawn — 

The form to fit the scene we now look on ! 

Behold the Doctor ! G-otham's fashion-gear, 

He 's doffed for something comfortable here ; 

While on the boat he twits me 'bout my hat— 

'T is my turn now : what in the world is that ! 

Drab-colored, steeple-crowned, one side caved in— 

Is that to any mortal hat akin ? 

A gray-blue jacket of knit woolj his form 

To just below the hips fits snug to warm ; 

Of breeches thence you but a little see. 

For soon looms up his boots' immensity— 

Up, up, his thighs they come — I have seen none 

Like them, since this enormous war begun ; 

Yet is this costume but another phase, 

Wherein his nature dignity displays. 

A farmer-neighbor talks to him who '11 say 

(Most delicately courteous is the way) : 

" The Doctor knows," not you know, Doctor— -thus, 

To him these neighbors are all courteous. 

Since e'en his bitterest enemy ^s forgiven, 

His smile benign seems like a beam from heaven. 

A servant's little boy waits with a sled 

Behind him, watching for his graceful tread ; 

The dog, a St. Bernard, no canine sham. 

Quite ready to fall in is honest Sam. 

Exultant vapors from the Hudson rise. 

Mid these, like fairy land, its left bank lies^ 

And as they raoTint into the Tipper skies — 



47 



Are those their shadows on the Kaatskill's face, 

That flit so blue, so fast each other chase ? 

The weeping willow's gold 's a roseate glow — 

A thought of pink lies on the new-fall'n snow — 

It is a morn with glories gushing o'er : 

There, living, is my friend, kind as of yore — 

Eve comes : out of the window as I gaze, 

Exhaustless Nature wears another phase : 

Eve comes : I look as I still wash my brushes ; 

High on the Kaatskill virgin snow yet blushes : 

The scene is full of a mysterious charm ; 

'T is early yet : work fails not on a farm : 

The Doctor, lithe and humming all the while, 

The boy behind, all booted in his style, 

The sled, the dog, move on in single file : 

Their forms fade fast- — and now I lose their roaming 

Around that point, dark, dim, in this deep gloaming — 

Thus man, good, glorious, like a god may be : 
God's name read backward — Dog — that too is he ; 
Allied to all the brutes, no dirtier dog, 
Divinity, ay, decency doth clog. 
'Twixt Barrytown and Gotham's puffed-up pride, 
Three years since a one-horse power steamboat plied, 
Stemming most awkwardly the Hudson's tide : 
One Captain Anderson commanded her : 
It would be hard to find a dirtier cur ; 
I can not now tell why : some future time, 
I '11 give particulars and string in rhyme, 
A lot of other human dogs I 've known. 
Who scratched the dirt that in my face was blown ; 
Great Gotham peers in sight ; I 've work there now ; 
(If my verse labors like this steaming scow. 
Few readers reach New York with me I trow). 



48 AMERICAN ART I 

Oh, prophet Mansfield, statistician, say 
When Gotham to Porkopolis gives way — 
Has it not come yet, Mansfield-fate-fixed day ? 
If smoke proves fire, the Western Queen will stand 
First may be 'mong the cities of the land ; 
If human gasbags are of greatness measure, 
The Western city has enormous treasure ; 
Yet are her heroes not as much renowned 
As those who in great Grotham may be found ; 
Its geniuses in fame have higher rank, 
Although their brains be just as much a blank; 
Its papers say, there fat corruption feeds, 
No place more mending of its morals needs : 
I care not for all this ; I love New York, 
Its enterprise so vast, its solid work. 



49 



PART I II. 

Between two isles steal some Atlantic billows ; 
Each isle still Narrows, yet the strangers pillows, 
Till these at last, by gentle, amorous play, 
Gain glorious room for a most glorious bay ; 
Then joyously they throw two arms far out, 
And clasp Manhattan Island round about. 
On these large, stalwart arms will soon be laid, 
The world's great, free and liberalizing trade. 
Stamboul is steep ; poor Venice lies so low ! 
Can sunlight through the fumes of London flow ? 
No smoke will e'er begrime Our City's brow ! 
Manhattan wears the crown of cities now ; 
God made it fairy-like ! so beautiful ! 
For once man is not all undutiful ; 
What God so bounteously blessed, man's taste 
Still beautifies, adorns, while it must waste. 
The Central Park, itself a city's site, 
Cost much, much money, but the thing is right ; 
And how delightful it will be when time 
Shall bring to planted forest-trees their prime ! 
Go to Fifth Avenue, there 's nothing mean ; 
Nothing to fret the eye, how clear ! how clean ! 



50 AMERICAN ART: 

If there I may not live, I still may walk, 
And of its wealth and beauty write and talk. 

The hour is for the throng too late, too soon ; 
Low lies behind me half the eastern moon, 
Silent, deserted, sleeping are the streets. 
And most of those who have them, 'tween their sheets ; 
Delicious, dreamy drowsiness descends. 
The listless moonlight with like gaslight blends ; 
In those young, thriving trees a leaf may stir, 
To love of love a low light whisperer ; 
The stillness seems to grow more still and still — 
But is this all that now the air doth fill ? 
Nay, nay, yon obelisk, this public square, 
Of Worth, of Madison, the names they bear, 
Melt the Great Past with the Great Present Care ! 
But clear, a little paler than the sky. 
Looms — is it that — or farther still — or nigh — 
Nay, 't is a huge mass of white marble reared. 
That men for money may with cheer be cheered ; 
Call it a tavern, sneerer, if you choose, 
By this hour glorified unto the Muse, 
Fifth Avenue Hotel looms dim but light — 
Looms like our Future, beautiful and bright — 
Ah, may we build a pile for all mankind. 
Where they the best of Freedom's cheer shall find, 
Where justice is the coin which they must pay 
For their accommodation while they stay. 
Where, if they choose, they can be at their ease 
And with politeness do just as they please. 

There is a breadth about and in this town, 
Expanding e'en the crime on which we frown. 
We must respect the intellectual scale 
That can so vastly in the moral fail. 



A SATIRE. 51 

If monstrous frauds the public purse assaii 
Yet works gigantic public wants supply, 
Bring calm convenience, sweet security ; 
Millions of money generously are spent, 
That for the public good are truly meant. 
Clear Croton, brought o'er hill and dale to bless^ 
Completes, or can complete, the cleanliness. 
The ruling spirit here's not all a fraud, 
To rob its fellow-man, defy its God. 

We should not close our eyes when men wet well j 
On all the good they do I love to dwell ; 
And so I linger as Our City lies — 
Panting with life, does it need wings to rise — 
And rose it not, the eagle of the land, 
In wrath, with talons ready, first at hand, 
To clutch Rebellion rampant by the throat ! 
Its Union larum listening traitors smote — 
Oh, execrable, thou, New York, they cried — 
Fools I ii would help the Nation to divide ? 
Come 1 walk down any, walk down Chatham street; 
See, how the stars and stripes your vision greet I 
On horses, vehicles thick driving by — 
You see them in each human being's eye ; 
Walk farther — there the Park expands in light; 
From all the house-tops, St. Paul's steepled height, 
The Nation's banner waves the Nation's might. 
Oh, I could clap my hands for very joy ! 
Delight thrills me that has no, no alloy ! 
See there I our emblem o'er the City Hall — 
It is not now New York — 't is National ! 
Look eastward ! like a wall of flaming brain. 
The Government and Freedom to sustain, 
Bold, busy is the patriotic press — 
There floats our flag in all its gloriousness ! 
Across the Park, look south, or north, or west, 
With our bright banner still your eyes are blest ; 



52 AMEKICAN ART: 

And Broadway shows more stars than heaven displays— 

Who '11 tell me we have falPn on evil days ! 

Let him who every human thing reviles, 

Mark Broadway now ; far as you see, for miles, 

By human feet is jammed each foot of ground, 

The trees and posts with human forms abound, 

And every window, up, up, to the eaves — 

On eaves and roofs the sky a crowd relieves ! 

Hark ! hear those shouts ! and see the kerchiefs wave ! 

The valiant march, The Capital to save ! 

The Seventh llegiment moves to the front, 

The first to fly to brave the battle's brunt ! 

The G-reat Republic's plain Democracy, 

First fought for by its Aristocracy ! 

Oh, in what age, what country would you live. 

Where man a brighter phase than this can give ! 

Mammon, whom Milton meanest spirit calls. 
Here proves that gold not all his soul inthralls ; 
Praise him I must whom moralists knock down, 
That from his pockets they may fill their own. 
Civilization springs from love of wealth, 
The last, if general, proves the former's health. 
All human things have a mean, selfish side — 
Can Mammon not display pure, splendid pride ? 
The Grovernment he now supplies with gold, 
That liberty to slavery be not sold. 
Lucre needs no republic to be free, 
E'en despots love it, grant it liberty ; 
The nabobs of New York shall live in story. 
Their names be haloed in this struggle's glory. 

And Gotham e'en in Art some praise deserves, 
Of other cities precedence preserves, 
Pays well, somehow gets those who paint the best 
(Some good work thus secures among the rest) 



A SATIRE. 53 

Its many Mayors and Grovernors of tlie State, 
On painted canvas to perpetuate. 

Ruskin argues that daubers must have brains ; 
Is their case bad, since he takes so much pains ? 
Two New York painters other claims present ; 
A Fulton's head the steamboat doth invent, 
While Morse to words the wings of lightning lent — 
That they had brains, few now in question call, 
Though neither ever learnt to paint at all. 

Darley can draw, and Palmer mold so well. 
That of their merits with delight I tell. 

I greet you, Charles L. Elliot, as of old ; 
We ne'er each other chill with envy's cold ; 
If one does well, the other can admire, 
Kegard still rising as he rises higher ; 
Ay, both of us can pity with a smile, 
Men charging envy in the threadbare style, 
To be characteristic of our craft ; 
Its true sons seldom use that small fry's shaft. 
I learn, like me, you profit from the past — 
To paint our best, we must not live too fast ; 
Besides the solid benefits this brings. 
From little gnats it draws the little stings. 

A scratch-club's orgies once in Gotham roared, 
And Cincinnati's glories herein floored. 
New York's Art-union miserably failed, 
Fraud, favoritism, folly's fill entailed, 
And unknown merit on its pales impaled. 
That that man Wetmore, then its president, 
When my Christ-pictures were for sale there sent, 
Should scripture-pictures quite unpopular declare, 
Or to dispute or to denounce I do not dare ; 
For Christ himself became unpopular, 
When he proved only the soul's caterer ; 



54 AMERICAN ART: 

Now, Christ himself might be more popular, 
Although he is our souls' great caterer ; 
I did not paint Christ-pictures any more — 
On that part of the past I close the door, 
And " shut the dog out," as Mrs. Browning says. 

But this is nothing — hear of Jenny Lind — 
How this concern against her sadly sinned ! 
Its president, changed to one A. M. Cozzens, 
(A goodly fellow, though such grow by dozens) 
Shows Jenny Lind among the pictures round, 
Exhibits a politeness most profound, 
And what doth still more to his fame redound, 
When Jenny will admire what he deems daubs, 
His choice as hers upon the public fobs ; 
His likes of pictures as the Swan's rehearses. 
And in Ms judgment Jenny Lind's reverses : 
Like a true knight he seeks to save her credit — 
So did he publish, so the public read it. 

The architects of Grotham color show, 
More than its daubers in harmonious glow. 
In marble, brick, stone, slate and glass combine, 
Tints that may hide defects in form and line. 

Muse, forward ! charge that stronghold! prove no hilding! 
Storm, storm that New York Tenth Street Studio building ! 
An arduous task ! for like to catacombs 
Are all its darksome passages and rooms ; 
Forward ! spring with a tiger's certain bound ! 
Charge ! charge ! hark ! from those tombs what doleful 

sound ! 
Nay, William Hart through guarded lines goes free, 
His power to paint needs not a pass from me. 
You are my prisoners, Leutze, you and Page — 
On you I soon shall vent some special rage ; 
I can not now neglect, leave in the lurch, 
Th' infallible, the true, the only Church. 



55 



Take care ! touch gingerly ! with kid-gloved hands— 

So great a man the greatest care demands ! 

Can aught be said that can increase his fame ? 

May more notorious yet be made his name ? 

Can more be added to his many bays, 

Whose work the people gaze at with amaze ? 

Poor National Acad'my of Design ! 

Its dingy shows fall into a decline, 

While all rush into Church's like mad sheep, 

To view his canvas-wonders vast and deep, 

To see how he in paint can all outleap. 

*' Ah, exquisite ! ah ! did you ever, la ! 

The finest picture that I ever saw — 

How beautiful ! oh, do just look ! I never ! 

See — how he made that water in the river — 

That 's just my style ! splendid ! divine ! oh dear ! 

That upstart Mrs. Smith ! she, she, come here — 

Nobody paints like Church the papers say " 

So ladies chatter in their happy way ; 

Their time, if not themselves, they thus beguile, 

For that indigenous, that furtive smile 

Shows one another they note well meanwhile. 

Perhaps men view the picture more, talk less. 

Yet blindly praise with larger emptiness ; 

The women see each other clear at least — 

The men see nothing at their very best ; 

What need Church care ? for business 't is the same, 

Since him The Greatest Master all proclaim ; 

Yes, all our papers say none paint like Church — 

No, sir ! go over all the world and search ! 

Church's Niagara ! that classic phrase, 
In Art conveys the very highest praise. 
This picture must be moving, brilliant, grand, 
To make so sjreat a furor in the land ! 



56 AMEKICAN ART : 

Imperfect would be my Art- diatribe, 
Church's Niagara not to describe. 
Ere I do this it will me well behoove 
To watch with care The Lord's Niagara move ; 
How in grand lines vast water-masses hurl, 
In beauteous floweret-forms in detail curl — 
Seem a huge crystal emerald cylinder — 
.Rolling as if no God their course could hinder — 
How fields of darting foam-light fringe this green 
With brilliant, yet most tender roseate sheen ; 
How giant spray-sprites drive with dripping dress, 
Sweep high, flit low, with weird mysteriousness, 
And how these weave a web of texture rare. 

Sun-moon-loved Iris sisters to upbear 

And how God's splendor seems inherent there — 
For in the deepest gloom of darkest night 
Still looms a lingering, lovely dream of light — 
Where day and night forever soars the song 
Of power, that knew not that it was so strong ! 

" And do you think that you can paint these Falls !" 
O'er the din shrilly an old woman calls, , 
As trembling with a strange, exciting joy, 
In painting them I all my force employ. 
Why, what a fool you must be 's on my lips, 
Why, what mad folly could my own eclipse. 
If I did not think I could paint these Falls ! 
For months this view one half my day inthralls. 

This is the key-note to the general talk ; ! 

Th' old lady, like most people, was a gawk ; 
They look at Nature, pictures, all the same. 
And gabble most when they have greatest fame. 
Sometimes an honest fellow comes along. 
Not touched by any old, grandific song — ^ 

" This is Niagara !" with scornful leer, ^ 

" I don't see anything to look at here !" 



A SATIRE. 57 

Into a shapeless fool he will not bloat, 
And prate sublime grandiloquence by rote. 

Niagara moves fast ; light, lightning faster ; 
Its thundrous voice still thunder owns a master ; 
Its blinding brilliancy, its gorgeous green, 
Without the sun would it at all be seen? 
Yet of all these, men in their petty way, 
In colors and in words have much to say ; 
Then why should not Niagara be " done" 
In words or paint, far better than the sun ? 
Man's imitations all are rather lame. 
The best compared with Nature somewhat tame ; 
Ancients or moderns nothing ever wrote, 
None painted, none the marble ever smote. 
And gave the full, fresh Life we fear and feel and see — 
The past, the future of the far eternity 
In every object, moment, every thought — 

All with that mystery so awful fraught 

And that more dread uncertainty that moves 
On with man's life — its constant shadow proves, 
That something undefined from which man flies. 
Yet longs to learn till his poor body dies— 
That beasts seem conscious of — that follows all, 
That man would drown in opium, alcohol. 
In superstition's, folly's catalogue. 
In anything that can his senses clog- 
So, when man's best is done, mankind's great masses. 
Can comprehend it like so many asses ; 
In its most perfect sense — this poor mankind — 
Its precious eyes, it is the most purblind ; 
A lazy liar, leisurely, at ease. 
Paints lies and proves the best man far to please. 
The merit of good writing is more plain. 
The masses herein greater breadth attain. 



58 AMERICAN art: 

" And do you think that you can paint these Falls !" 
In colors nor in words my spirit crawls — 
A faithful picture patiently to give 
I promise, may thy servant then still live ? 
Its pigment-painting proved an anxious thing — 
'T will be less work Niagara to sing. 

A limestone barrier of grand, mountainous lines, 
Seeming unyielding, its main forms defines ; 
An isle, with many kinds of foliage crowned, 
That may in temperate latitudes be found, 
Shapes it to two unequal parts ; besides, 
An islet from the largest isle divides 
The lesser from another, which we call 
One, the American, one Center Fall — 
The latter here is an affair quite small. 
Though sixty feet wide and a very wonder 
Of beauty, with a voice allied to thunder. 
The rocky brink a sharp line marks across. 
Seen through the waters as they o'er it toss. 
These in their maddest mood and wildest storm 
Must to this fundamental law conform. 
How patiently they are avenging this ! 
For see ! for miles extends a dread abyss — 
They riddle, lick up subtly-tongued this rock, 
Or at its shaly base defiance mock — 
Mined by their spray 't is hurled to depths profound, 
There by their feet to nothingness is ground. 
All past and present data are agreed, 
These great Falls ever southward thus recede, 
Grow less and less in height, and so in time 
Have lost already much of the sublime. 
When many, many centuries ago, 
These wondrous waters fell some miles below, 
And when their width was narrowed to a third — 
What movement then was seen, what roar then heard I 



A SATIRE. 59 

Perhaps tlien fifty feet deep were they heaped, 

Ere finally three hundred down they leaped ! 

Could they be thus now for our poets' sake — 

Then with what verses would the world they wake ! 

How much do we not lose in language grand, 

Of great Jehovah and His hollow hand ! 

The greatest depth now on their convex brink. 

Some twenty feet from thoughtless talk you'd think ; 

I judge 't is five ; yet what majestic might, 

One hundred sixty-six feet falls in height ! 

How huge this movement ! how magnificent ! 

What splendor, gorgeousness are with it blent ! 

If in the cars from Chippewa you go. 

Should suddenly the falling waters show 

As you look down some fifty feet below, 

You from your seat, as I, may startled spring — 

My Grod ! what's that ! that moving, bright green thing 1 

May be your words of doubt, alarm, amaze, 

When for the first time there you see it blaze. 

Observe — of grandeur it has yet enough, 

To make me vapor my sublimest stufi". 

Near Church now go, on the Canadian shore, 
(It is the left) close to the rush and roar. 
The Horseshoe Fall, far greater of the two, 
Almost encircling us, from here we view. 
Its brink resembles three sides of a square. 
Irregular, changed by the waters' wear ; 
The horseshoe shape being gone this will attest ; 
One side is facing east, one north, one west. 
Near us, the waters' brink 's so near, it hides 
The plunging waves on th' nearest of the sides ; 
Trace their brink's line up stream from near our feet- 
There see it bulging out — again retreat — 
From hence to that last point the waters rollick. 
Bounce toward their plunge in a mad, dancing frolic; 



60 AMERICAN art: 

Thence turns the brink an obtuse angle (seen 
Where first appears the plunging face so green) 
This angle follows then, far over runs, 
Where deep the tumbling waters roll in tuns j 
Another angle sharply turns down thence, 
On, down the stream, still down and wide from hence, 
Much more down stream than opposite to us ; 
Makes at the tower one angle more, obtuse, 
(The round, stone tower, not built upon the sands, 
That near Groat Island, near the brink there stands) 
These are the brink's great lines ; vast, numberless, 
The details of its turns and crevices. 

We stand close by the rush, am.id the roar, 
See near their brink the mighty masses pour. 
There, far up stream, there from the clouds they troop. 
Here, down, down, down, to unknown depths they swoop ! 
Look to the right, the left, across, down stream, 
Still the gulf's walls, vast, widening, waters teem, 
Half round th' horizon — falls seem not to end. 
While to the zenith clouds of spray ascend. 
A mile around this Horseshoe Fall may wind. 
Ere by Goat Island in its course confined 
Athwart the gulf — there on the other side — 
'Twixt distant shores a faint line may divide — 
Faint, far away, far water, farther sky ; 
To find the left shore there our eyes will try — 
Three miles above it must be — is it lost, 
Melted to clouds or mid the breakers tost ? 
There ! singly see the quiet tree-tops peep, 
A nearly level, tree-notched line thence sweep, j 

Till at our right it nears, curves up a bank, high, steep, | 
Whose level marks the level of the plain, | 

Rolling from which, Niagara's glories reign • \ 

Then from the same far distant point, reversed, j 

The tumult growing as 't is more dispersed, j 



A SATIRE. 61 

Another line sweeps on, turns to our feet, 
A long, grand curve, notched by the waters' beat — 
'T will fifty feet of gradual fall define ; 
Now if we mark the rocky brink's dark line. 
Between these points, how high and wide the space, 
How vast the field o'er which these rapids race ! 
Ledge after ledge the waters ride and leap. 
Let loose, they now seem not one law to keep, 
'Gainst sunken rocks they dash — then from them fly 
Rosettes, sparkling like diamonds, twice, thrice ten feet 

high — 
This slope, remember, you by miles must measure, 
Where they display with potent power their pleasure, 
Where these wild rapids with each other cope, 
In freaks beyond imagination's scope. 
See ! near our right turn with a sudden mind 
That grand curve's waves, sharp, surging swift and blind, 
Your flesh creeps as on rock and air they grind — 
Hear ! how they lap bloodthirstily the beach — 
God help the living thing within their reach ! 
More palpable than all the power, extent, 
Is there the fierce, the tigerish intent ! 
There, near the center frantically wild — 
Our feet here laving gently as a child — 
There roll they mammoth-like, huge, seeming slow — 
Here o'er the riddled rock play to and fro, 
Like little kittens ere too old they grow. 

Study this foreground : we stand on a ledge, 
A level rock, with lamellated edge, 
Irregular and broken in its course ; 
The tiny wavelets with expiring force, 
First lave our feet, then rippling, curling o'er. 
Another level seek some two feet low'r ; 
They join a foaming stream, not wide nor deep — 
We on yon lost and lonely rock could leap, 



62 AMERICAN ART : 

Oblong, rectangular, flat and quite dry, 

Wlien up Lake Erie whistling winds blow liigh ; 

But blowing down, the waters somewhat rise — 

The prettiest play beneath Grod's glorious skies, 

On, round this rock will then regale our eyes. 

A heart seems to be beating far above, 

Laving this lost rock with the pulse of love ; 

Gentle pulsations spread fold after fold, 

III fashion infinite, in forms untold, 

Bedeck it with such living tenderness, 

Bestow such beauty with their soft caress. 

So fringe, flow'r, furbelow, festoon this rock, 

With such new antics still your knowledge mock, 

And yet so meek, mild, modest in their way, 

While on each side there is such wild display — 

I think you will agree with me and say, 

*T is very, very beautiful to see. 

More beautiful it surely could not be ! 

The rushing stream 'tween this lost rock and us, 
Its foam folds into folds most curious, 
While leaping up beyond, another flies, 
New flower-and-leaf-forms ever to devise. 
Two ledges next above, each two feet higher, 
Or less, with care observe and then admire ; 
Raise your eyes slowly — turn, extend your view- 
Each inch of space startles with something new. 
So utterly unthought of, quaint and queer — 
And still surprised you still cry what is here ? 
There, waves fall plumb, there, farthest to the right, 
Throb, throb and dart like jets of liquid light, 
(Flash at right angles as they strike below, 
Almost as swift as lightning thence they go) 
Then (to the left) their movement change and glide 
(Not dashed to foam) swift, swift and swifter slide — 
Kidge o'er one ledge whose front they hardly hide ; 



A SATIRE. CS 

This ledge, the upper, to the left extends, 

More to the left and down from it descends 

Slightly, a space, o'er which, not foaming still, 

A new curve every line of room doth fill : 

There — do you see waves turn, twist on their track. 

When almost o'er that second ledge, fly back ? 

Curves infinite this strangest surface net. 

While near the low'r ledge cones dance, dart and jet, 

Forms indescribable still beauty fret 

Talk of invention I of idealizing; ! 

You fool I first find the skill of realizing ! 

You profound mathematician, need you go. 

Far as the stars that you may something know ? 

Here you can ponderingly calculate. 

With complex conies fill your tapeline pate. 

The rock whereon we stand and that lost one, 
Where waves still dally ever and anon. 
The lowest ledge beyond it, have one level ; 
The next below presents a foaming revel. 
The waves there dash to squirming froth-heaps high — 
Sometimes rosettes ten feet in th' air will fly — 
But fronting that lost rock they are more quiet, 
(It fronts the brink) there run not so much riot. 
There refluent ripples seem disposed to rest, 
To be inclined to snug into a nest ; 
Indeed, those flowing on soon form a place. 
Smooth, like a polished, convex mirror's face, 
Damasked by froth with delicacy's grace ; 
The spot is small ; the impulse comes again, 
From boisterous work they can not long refrain — 
All, each and all, one purpose only prove — 
Onward, resistless to the brink they move — 
They overarch that brink in beauteous play, 
In movement changed and floriform array, 
Down slippery grooves here smooth and swift they, glide, 
With foaminof liofht-crests there the ed^-e bestride ; 



6i AMERICAN ART: 

In yon spot they scoop out tlie flinty brink 

So savagely they almost seem to think, 

There o'er it dart in lines ferocious, straight, 

And horrent fly into the face of fate — 

At convex arching o'er the brink there hoot — 

Direct into the yawning gulf there shoot — 

Whew ! how they cleave its ever-gaping maw ! 

These waves terrific are that curve's we saw — 

Described above — here is their fury's height — 

Here they seem biting out the rock outright ! 

So all and all, hurl, hurry, whirl and heave, 

Till loosed still more, the brink they leap and leave, 

Then suddenly far swifter, brighter grown, 

With freedom such as they have never known, 

Down, headlong hurtling down, and down, and down— 

They glorious action now with glory crown ! 

Art pregnant busy brain with thoughts of power? 
If life thou carry, be it born this hour. 
Bear me no puling babe, no doughy brat — 
I want no work indefinite like that. 
Ah, words, ah, language, now, now do not fail ; 
Make not expression puny, poor and pale, 
While I burn with an incandescent glow — 
Tell something now of what I feel and know. 
Here is a wondrous down and upward play — 
Floods falling fast, and storms of mounting spray. 
If greatly greatness 't is not mine to utter, 
Ah, let me inane sacrilege not sputter ! 
Yet be my speech with delicacy clothed. 
E'en as these Fails to beauty are betrothed. 
Precipitated, undulations vast, 
Move, as the Present moves upon the Past, 
An irresistible, unbroken force. 
While changeful hours conceal its awful course — 



A SATIRE. 65 

So o'er tliese hasting waters' ponderous powers, 

An intermittent motion wreathes its flowers 

Above, a great heart 7nust beat, beat and beat — 
A heart that moves a world's floods in its heat, 
And whirls them on and on, so far, so deep, 
They seem into another world to leap ! 
Throbbing and throbbing with a quickening jet, 
Their path between two worlds they fringe and fret 
With forms so exquisite, so tender, new, 
Another new world hangs between the two ! 

Along the brink, rocks more or less depressed, 
Less covered, more projecting than the rest, 
Cause marked divisions o'er the waters' face. 
Extending from the brink down to the base, 
Their stubborn influence throughout you trace ; 
So the Past shapes the Present, Future still, 
Let us be free as e'er we can or will. 

Freedom, ah, freedom ! all things love thee, all ! 
All leap to new life at thy witching call ! 
Let not a crowd's curse curse our country ever ; 
'T would be as fatal as its parts to sever ; 
Men, women, water, trees, all things want room, 
To burst into their perfect, beauteous bloom ; 
With larger freedom all things lovelier grow — 
When treasonous slavery struck its first foul blow, 
The millions of the North flashed out in ire, 
The black Rebellion to consume with fire. 
Yet did it free them from that unwise bond 
That bound their necks to slavery's magic wand ; 
Slowly but daily now their thoughts make fate — 
This curse from out the land exterminate — 
Spare nothing, white uot black, no shape, no thing, 
That can such wicked, causeless treason bring ; 
All perish utterly, all Die, DIE, DIE 
Is the resolve our freemen now live by ! 
6 



66 AMERICAN ART: 

Hear ! hear their voice ! hear ! hear their tread resound ! 
Lick up this shivery's rock which kept us bound — 
Rest not till into nothingness 't is ground ! 

Nor rich, nor poor, proud, independent, free, 
They give the law to their own liberty • 
With hard, not slavish work good sense expand. 
Each man of them a king on his own land. 
The masses never reached a nobler pitch ; 
These rebels would now rot in their last ditch, 
Had there but been a Man to lead — alack ! 
God gives us leaders like that Little Mac ! 
.Damnation dog that traitorous imbecile ! 
Oh, what contempt abhorrent do I feel 
For puffed pretension in a puny man — 
Brains bolted of all substance but the bran ! 
Seeing such men, who. who would be man from choice — 
And yet to be a man who '11 not rejoice. 
In glowing praises raise his grateful voice, 
When men, the million, the suspected mass, 
The freemen of the North all hopes surpass, 
Are still enthusiastic, stern, intense, 
Though they were doomed so long to dig defense, 
When they could ride down all this Satan's brood, 

And serve it up for turkey-buzzards' food 

Like their Niagara, men, means still pour, 
From out the mighty Northern reservoir. 
Like their Niagara most truly great, 
Most glorious while in that transition-state. 
That bounding leaping toward the broader field 
Their ocean-future only full can yield. 

Thus leaps Niagara toward its broad ocean. 
Thus burst its waves with beauteous, bright commotion, 
Plunge from the rock that base no more will lend, 
Expand in splendor as the air they rend ; 



A SATIRF. 67 

If at the brink their depth in feet be two, 

An hundred feet below 't is twenty through ; 

Far from the brink they arching shoot, observe, 

And from this convex line they do not swerve, 

Are farthest out when at their shifting base ; 

The line is not continuous ; you can trace 

The throbbing motion of that mighty heart, 

E'en in the densest, thickest, greenest part, 

While into jagged portions, torn, uneven. 

In places of less depth this line is riven. 

Yet is there nothing ragged, incomplete ; 

The shallowest places hang like a vast sheet 

Of finest lace with heavy, pendent fringes. 

Where the pulsation on the air impinges ; 

These fringes curve transversely, are convex below, 

Downward more wide apart, defined and heavier grow ; 

In the turmoil we rather guess than see 

That in the whole height thirty there may be. 

For as they move, who counts as rapidly? 

Thus seem they everywhere and yet nowhere, 

Embroideries of flow'r forms, quaint and rare. 

Snowdrops unnumbered for a moment peer — 

Now vanish — are now there, now here — 

Burst through that unique, gorgeous emerald green, 

Surpassing for a moment e'en its sheen. 

Far up the rapids mark dashed into light, 

A stream of foam that poets would call white — 

Flung o'er the brink in flowerets down the green. 

Can many things more beautiful be seen ? 

Another, near the brink, there, farther on, 

From sunken rocks the water 's dashed upon. 

Springs bright and down the green profusely showers, 

A double wreath of changing, brilliant flowers ; 

Converging where the center 's worn acute. 

Far over, there 's these waters' gala suit ; 



68 AMERICAN ART : 

The rocky brink there only they conceal, 
Barely their garment's glorious green reveal — 
Those center-waves, wild-frantic in their joy, 
To deck ornately all their force deploy ; 
Lawns figured, flowered, of fine, rare woof display, 
Fringe and festoon and garland and array 
With lightsome movement, with light, living grace, 
With brilliancy the waters' brilliant face ! 
Ah no ! 

Let me not say their gala-suit is there : 
Seem they not still more beautiful elsewhere ? 
Between the center and the distant tower 
Does not that, that look like their brightest flower, 
The burst of beauty on their bursting splendor, 
And oh, so sweetly, infinitely tender ! 
Ay, thus each moment, through each day and night. 
By sun, by moon, by stars, or when their light 
Is by the coursing cloud-hosts caught and sent to us, 
Niagara grows ever still more beauteous ! 
One part exhausts my words — what can I do. 
When one that seems still greater comes to view. 
What else but say, when all my words are spent, 
Not then and there, but here and now I meant, 
When I said this, this is the glorious spot — 
Ay, overwhelmed I cry, where is it not? 
Behold, below the brink a rock projecting. 
The waves from their appointed course deflecting, 
Between the center and the tower, there throne. 
On this, the western face, unique, alone. 
Two, if not flying, yet foaming buttresses, 
Two brilliantly dissolving brightnesses ! 
How busy too ! hand over hand they climb. 
Working fast, faster, faster against time. 
They crook, squirm, leap, dart, jump, twist — how they try 
Heels over head, back to the top to fly 



A SATIRE. G9 

Are they not beautiful in the endeavor 
To do what still they can not do forever ? 
Thus endless beauty and exhaustless power 
Go hand in hand until we reach the tower, 
There more profusely novelty to shower. 

In the whole breadth of this Fall, only here, 
Rocks on the brink and at the base appear ; 
To th' tower a foot-bridge from Goat Island leads 
And no abutment artificial needs ; 
Just on the brink some rocky masses lie, 
Between, not over which, the waters fly, 
While from below, half up the fearful height. 
Huge rocks are heaped up, where the jets alight, 
Bart off in spray, or in cascades between 
In endless, tortuous dashings can be seen. 

Change may not always be improvement, no ; 
These last rocks crashed into the gulf below, 
I think it is now eighteen years ago. 
And added beauty in a high degree ; 
But when the cliff adjacent — 'let me see — 
Yes, two years since, tuns, tuns in weight down thundered? 
Where the preceding year I drew, it blundered ; 
It gained in grandeur, for its beetling brow, 
Is still more threatening, overlooming now ; 
It, like a hero unacknowledged thrones 
Who will not speak except in startling tones, 
Nor till the ceaseless worry of this world 
Has mined his patience and his being is hurled, 
Haply against his will and yet in wrath, 
Unto another place to cleave a path, 
To make those hear who would not see before, 
To break, but to be rugged still the more. 
Yet show mayhap pure crystals to the core. 
These rocks too buried my beloved cascade, 
So wondrous, beautiful, and one that made 



70 AMERICAN art: 

A fitting foreground for a scene so weird— 

I meant to paint it, ignorance to beard. 

I heard the crash and saw the cloud of dust 

From where we stand — ay, Madam, do not trust 

The rocks we 're on, I should before have said — 

For quivering with these waters' mighty tread, 

Almost beneath our feet soon after fell 

Fragments disjointed, huge, and made a hell 

Of sound if not of waters — out pell-mell 

They rushed — the people — from their houses near, 

Startled as if this were uncommon here. 

And have a care too of a sudden mood, 
The spray may take, its presence to intrude ; 
Subtle and penetrating is its reach, 
Your dry-goods finery right well 't will bleach. 
It always takes the color from yon green, 
When but its least vagaries intervene. 
When but a breath comes from some giant's throat. 
Between that emerald and our eyes to float. 
I told you of the falling waters' fringes, 
Where the pulsation on the air impinges — 
In many points their convex edges end — 
From each of these fine particles ascend — 
Expanded by the currents of the air — 
Their shapes to comets some resemblance bear. 
One source this of the spray ; the other leaps, 
Darts rocket-like, rolls up from unknown deeps — 
If shallow, falling waves fling vails like lace, 
So finely wrought that they no fairy's face 
Of finest finished features could conceal — 
Yet gauze-like weavings still more rare reveal 
The movements infinite, the lighter play, 
The weird, the magic mysteries of the spray ! 
Bedeviled dauber ! not so much ado — 
The Lord is criticized as well as you ; 



A SATIRE. 71 

" The Falls is nice; but the spray spiles 'em," cries 

Curtly a critic who consults his eyes ; 

" Spile 'em" no more, ye sprites ! no longer spread 

The sun-the moon-loved Iris-sisters' bed, 

Ungrateful as these are — they flit as soon. 

As instantly as they miss sun or moon ; 

Naught heed they of your playful tenderness ; 

Responsive are they to but one caress — 

Their life, their burning glov7, their trembling bliss, 

Are only for their heavenly lovers' kiss ! 

When generous Shears was of the Clifton House the 
head, 
A traveling Englishman there petulantly said, 
" Here in this country everything 's so vaasf^ — 
True is the judgment he upon it passed ; 
And far more beautiful it must be too, 
Than is the Old World if they tell us true. 
Ruskin, who sees so well, sees o'er the Rhine, 
A shuddering Iris on her damp sheets pine ; 
And beauteous Italy has cataracts 
That furnish Byron with most harrowing facts. 
Behold poor Iris there ! like hopeless hope, 
O'er death-bed agonies most frightful mope ; 
All hell he finds and all its parts infernal. 
Damnation is it — something that 's eternal — 
Horror's essential oil will not suflSce 
To picture what he saw with his own eyes. 
That cataracts must in his eyes have been 
While writing thus is in the writing seen ; 
How damned delectable there falls must be," 
Giving to poets such sweet imagery ! 
Dissection is an item I insist 
Belonging to the death-bed, all-hell list, • 
The only truthful figure he has missed. 



72 AMERICAN ART: 

Vast falliDg waters not much honor pay 

To human modesty found in their way ; 

Such modesty they, like the Lord will scorn, 

Strip all who come as he still has them born. 

Your drapery to Dame Nature's they will trim, 

Your body they '11 enjoy with joy most grim. 

They will dissect you, Madam, limb from limb 

If you without or with your will intrude 

On their most playful, their joy-maddened mood. 

Could not a tiger tear you in his glee? 

Let us be safe, he 's beautiful to see ! 

How lithesomely he leaps ! how high he bounds ! 

If there are claws and teeth and warning sounds, 

Yet long we not to join him in his gambols, 

Though certain he would have us for his shambles ? 

Niagara 's like fascination dread — 

To join the play around, below, o'erhead — 

To be as noisy, wicked and as mad, 

To be as busy, boisterous and as glad ! 

On Grod serene as soon seek for a scowl, 
On heaven's great glory look for hell-flames foul. 
As raw-heads, bloody-bones, things of that kind, 
On our Niagara expect to find ; 
Niagara ! how beautiful thy face ! 
There nothing of the " horrible" has place ! 

Come to this spot, my friend, some day in June, 
July or August, two, three hours past noon. 
The zenith, west, southwest quite clear must be — 
Then wealth of color may be here to see. 
May be : for these conditions sometimes fail 
These colors' most extraordinary scale. 
All their unrivaled vividness to show — 
I have not found yet why this should be so. 

That Lake Superior, all the upper lakes indeed, 
Are well nigh colorless all seem agreed. 



A SATIRE. 73 

Except the last above The Falls, Lake Erie, 
Where forces are at work and never weary — 
Lime, vegetable matter decompose, 
(For this I cite John Locke as one who knows) 
Thicken the water that you can not peer 
More than four feet below the surface here. 
Impure in fact yet in appearance pure, 
It seems done purposely to make it sure, 
The color of these Falls should matchless be, 
As is their action, form, immensity. 

Perhaps your untaught eyes may not discern 
The tints when there : some this takes years to learn — 
Yet if a cloud throw shadow on yon green, 
When it by you is for the first time seen, 
Then passing on, its place give to the sun. 
You may exclaim as others then have done. 
Had we not seen, this we had not believed ! 
(How frequently are daubers thus aggrieved) 
E'en you, unskilled, a change may then discover — 
Of Nature's looks need be no zealous lover 
To see that green put on its gold-green robe — 
Haply none other like it on the globe — 

The peerless sun, the palpitating dome. 
Find here the welcome of a happy home ; 
How they with eager rivalry contend. 
Harmoniously opposing natures blend. 
This field magnificent of rapids share ! 
When the sun's fiery eyes are burning there. 
The dome's blue orbs still peer out everywhere ; 
When yellow, orange, burnished gold appear 
The cool blue hues from clear sky still are near ; 
When rocks with ruby, topaz tints are flaming. 
Their ardor shades of amethyst are taming ; 
The dim rock-brink, the sun, the water, sky. 
Melt yonder to a royal purple dye ; 



74 AMERICAN ART: 

Pale-pink, cream-green, prismatic touches tinge 
The froth-and-foam-flowers as they ledges fringe ; 
Veins like bright molten gold are darting through 
Waves of dark golden-green and purple blue ; 
That strangest surface with such varied lines, 
In each of them a diflFerent tint defines. 
Rocks here, when dry, are pale-pink, pearly-gray— 
Touched by a wavelet or a sprite of spray, 
To precious stones of every hue they turn — 
Then flashing diamonds in profusion burn — 
Then rubies' blood-red, topaz' richest yellow 
The greenish beryl and blue sapphire mellow. 

Our loved, lone, lost rock lies a stone inlaid, 
Those streams a mother-of-pearl bed have made, 
This beauteous bed with brilliant gems is teeming, 
Thick from its wreaths their tinted eyes are gleaming ; 
Fronting this rock — that quiet place you know — 
A like show-case can lapidary show ? 
And this loved rock, love's wavelets loving laving, 
When sun and sky their painting wands are waving. 
They seem to center more afi"ection there — 
Touch it with an inimitable care. 
Now fast as love takes it in its embrace. 
See, sun and sky, how they each other chase 
And with a rapid skill unrivaled trace 
The yellows, oranges, reds, purples, blues, 
The violets in all their various hues — 
What silver-pearl-like chaplets fast are flung, 
Round curving, crowding wavelets richly strung. 
And how the sun its fire-breath nowise stints, 
The sky its kiss with cooling lips imprints 

Turn from the right now to the left (half round 
You know you turn to see its farthest bound 
Across the gulf where we Goat Island found) 
The tower this jutting point shall tower-fall name j 
Deservedly it would have world-wide fame, 



A SATIRE. 75 

If not a world of waters with it fell 

That would keep Byron busy bawling hell : 

How small this section with the whole compared ! 

Yet boundless beauty it has amply shared : 

Pale- pink 's the common flag of foam and spray, 

Reviewed in person by the god of day ; 

But there the teeming and tumultuous crowds, 

Though all else yield to domineering clouds, 

In darkest days still to their colors cling, 

Pale-pink though paler to pale pearl-green bring ; 

But when, oh heavens ! how marvelous is the change, 

From sunlight clouded to its unchecked range — 

Lit by the sun's life-light-love lending glance. 

How proudly all in precious colors prance. 

How with the sun all into new life start — - 

New swarms of spray-sprites leap and dance and dart 

Dressed in gay robes arranged with finest art — 

That rich foam-light a glamour-garb assumes. 

In dreamy cream-green, pearl-pink strangely blooms; 

These are the rocks — you may remember them — 

That fell and of this tower-fall made this gem — 

Set in that rarest, deep-green river-bed, 

How they contrast their golden-ingot-red 

An eddy up stream drives the current here. 
And leaves the water from light froth -foam clear. 
Its waves around these rocks play hide and seek, 
While they lie ever motionless and meek ; 
If mid this joy-commotion there be grief. 
Tears coursing o'er these rocks bring its relief; 
They weep that they can not return caresses. 
That wave and spray-love ever effervesces ; 
And yet sometimes do they not seem to spring. 
To leap to sunshine, join the bounding ring, 
The whirl of action, form, sound, color, light, 
Where not a single death's-head comes in sight. 



76 AMEEICAN art: 

No rocks Byronic look black all around, 
With "pitiless horror" our souls confound- 
No ! no ! no ! glories only here abound ! 
On our Niagara there 's nothing sooty, i ^ 

'T is clothed in Color's iridescent beauty ! 
Color, impalpable, pervading, weird — ; ] 

What would this world be if by thee not cheered — 
And our Niagara thy subtle skill. 
Decks with unbounded love, unbridled will ! 

Let us now leave and love this charmed tower-fall ; 
Of the whole western face a part how small — 
The distance to yon central point how great ! 
How breadth, height, color, splendor, motion mate I 
From the far sky, dim, faint in clearest view, 
The rapids course in greenish-purplish blue, 
While pearl-pink foam-light terraces defines, 
In varied, delicate and level lines ; 
Deeper and deeper as the brink they near, 
These colors grow, though ever bright and clear, 
Then merge into the rock-brink's red and gold — 
This passed, what brilliant beauty is unrolled ! 
When foam-light flings its fairy laces o'er, 
Their dazzling brightness color does not low'r — 
Its touch ethereal, color seems no longer — 
The slightest breath of pink may prove the stronger — 
Descending low'r, lace-meshes wider grow, 
There the least purplish-gray would seem to show; 
But when above the brink the tumult 's less. 
Below the brink, how great the tenderness 
Color in emerald green can there express. 
Alternately in large and well-marked masses. 
Whose splendor haply all on earth surpasses, 
Tbis breath of pink, this tender green divide, 
Yet keep the breadth throughout this breadth so wide, 



M 



77 



So vast, diminishing to us its height ; 

Its low'r third too is of dense spray the site, 

Whose rolling volumes higher can seldom rise, 

And lessening thus its great height to our eyes ; 

This varies much ; its breadth unequaled never ; 

The waters in their new bed do not sever 

From beauty, nay they emulate their past ; 

And e'en their movement is almost as fast ; 

First mid the nether spray high hillocks heave, 

Then can not stay an instant— they must leave — 

From shore to shore, except that rock-bed green, 

Froth-foam-light, of a cooler, silvery sheen. 

Flies to complete the breadth of this grand scene — 

The yellow sunlight floods its perfect face. 

Spirits of roses red then leave their trace. 

From the blue dome descends attempering grace — 

Spray-sprites aloft majestically soar. 

Painting bright phantasies on heaven's blue floor; 

Some seem such souls as need not be forgiven 

Who see already their new home in heaven ; 

The glory of this scene to heaven they bear. 

Glory that may not shame the glories there ; 

See how they change yon isle to fairy-land — 

Yonder behold that crowding, busy band, 

Bearing the sun-loved Iris as she trembles. 

Her joy of life and love to none dissembles — 

A wondrous witch ! how deep her colors' glow — 

In tone to brilliant foam-light far below, 

Yet the most brilliant object is her bow ; 

But often variable : here is she coy, 

A glow of glory there, a glorious joy. 

Where light and color all their power combine. 

With splendor e'en the splendors here outshine, 

A glimpse of heaven's illumination give, 

Tempting a cynic to rejoice to live 



78 AMERICAN art: 

Let now large castellated cumuli, 
(Thrice ten degrees, not more, they must be high) 
Crowd teeming tribute from Grod's glorious sky 
Between Groat Island and Canadian shore, 
Above the rapids looming, leaning o'er. 
Loom and lean o'er these waters as if they 
Longed their own place to leave in this display, 
To fall into this fascinating strife, 
To be as active, eager, full of life — 
Who, though in all their bearing so subdued, 
Seldom seen vivid here, though richly hued — 
Still are they glorious e'en where splendors shine, 
Splendors more dazzling, if not more divine — 
Splendors so full, fresh fullness ever teeming, 
I sometimes doubt, dream, deem it but a dreaming— 

Ha I seems it not like a sublime endeavor, 
Whose soul would seize and whirl yours on forever I 
Ha ! flush you not with fervor at this strife, 
Fullness of form, sound, color, splendor, life ? 
Do you not feel you could do anything ? 
Into this vortex bound with one mad spring, 
To ride on joy-delirium's whirling wing? 
What if your lovely limbs be laved to death — 
Your spirit would be loosed to boundless breath ! 
You would float finely. Madam, at yon height — 
In size you think your little hand now right. 
To do the work of any proud spray-sprite ? 
Ethereal color's still more nimble corps. 
You could help them paint all this fretwork o'er, 
With pencil exquisite bring into view 
The work invisible these spray-sprites do ? 
Ha ! mingling in their moonlight mysteries, 
How you could learn most secret histories — 
Learn how enchantments on enchantments rise. 
To be admired by more than mortal eyes — 



A SATIRE. 79 

Learn to interpret music-words that course 
Through my poor frame with an unearthly force — 
And though I listened as a lover would, 
And thought some whisperings I understood, 
And feathery touches thrilled me — by my beard ! 
Sad maiden-sprites my wooing wildly jeered ! 

Yet listening to these sounds that do not stun,, 
Do you not hear through the confusion One, 
One burden and One song — all with One Voice, 
Or low or loud, in unison, Rejoice ! 
Each movement surging and each ripple curling. 
Thousands of giants tramping, stamping, whirling, 
The ponderous pounding and the pretty purling, 
What power, what praise, what joy must they not tell I 
If you will listen lovingly and well. 
Haply you '11 hear mid its triumphant roar, 
The low, low lullaby of love's loved lore — 
Then thundrous, crack! crack! crack! comes crashing o'er 
Your ears a sound that gives each nerve a jar, 
And makes you wonder where and what you are ; 
How much through one unpracticed sense we lose ! 
The whirls of sound that our dense ears confuse. 
Had but Beethoven's spirit heard them sing — 
How o'er the world forever they would ring I 
Earth's fullest chorus to Grod's Grloria — 
To Him its heavenly high Hallelujah — 
The anthem of its One Niagara ! 

The scene Church painted I have now depicted ; 
It is to this my couplets are restricted ; 
With few more words I leave this work of God, 
The work of man, if possible, to laud. 

Madam, if I had money and a bride, 
I'd sometime at the Clifton House abide, 
And take my rooms along its eastern side. 



80 AMEEICAN art: 

Where th' American Fall could charm my eye — 

Then I would have my love so sit and lie, 

That its fine lace should be her bright background, 

Its beauty should her beauty all surround, 

Fit bridal vail for my rapt soul's sweet care 

Blushing responses to my glances there — 

I tremble nigh with terror at such bliss • 

Now, Madam, fail not to remember this : 
Those who Niagara's extent would know. 
Must tread its leading points above, below ; 
Hire a carriage and then be sure to walk — 
I wish I could be with you still and talk — 
Talk of Goat Island and the rare, rare taste 
That will not make of it an " improved" waste ; 
Long live the Porter family, by whom 
'T is kept in all its pristine, perfect bloom, 
A gem set on these waters' tossing breast. 
So still, so quiet and so full of rest, 
I hardly know sometimes which I love best ; 
And all the little isles, romantic nooks, 
• Laved by most gentle, murmuring little brooks ; 
And I would like to see this heaving tide 
In the abyss, to a smooth calm subside, 
Then dash on suddenly, as if t' outdart 
The earth itself, had it but had the start — 
How wonders great still one another follow. 
How at the whirlpool it itself doth swallow, 
(So guide-books say) and how at last there lies, 
Blended and blessed with our Grod's glorious skies. 
Blue-green, faint, distant, an immense expanse 
That leads the soul afar into a trance. 
That magnet-like draws on the dreamy gaze — 
Ontario, in midsummer's morning haze 



81 



PART IV. 

Church's Niagara now bring before us : 
" Have you seen Church's picture ?" was the chorus 
When at Niagara I daubed in fifty-eight — 
I saw it since in Gotham, and can say 't is great ! 
Great in invention ! in the grand Ideal ! 
It scorns the " nauseous detail" of the Ileal ! 
How nicely Nature's motion here is trimmed, 
How all her glaring; show is gently dimmed ; 
The water, if it move at all, moves on 
With all the easy nonchalance of ton. 
Observes the rules of good society, 
Falls with Fifth Avenue propriety. 
One form, repeated in a happy way, 
Simplicity of genius doth display ; 
For that most varied, strange foreground's array, 
This picture gives the same touch — dab — dab — dab — 
Is it a wonder that our critics blab ? 
Its color and its light (a thought how great !) 

Into two bits of rainbow concentrate 

In short, all Church's work unrivaled stands. 

By man, or dead or living in all lands. 

To bring the grandest subjects to the smallest scale — 

Therefore fit monarch for our Art-world him we hail ! 



82 AMERICAN ART : 

Yet in Niagaras he 's almost shamed 

In his own way, by two who 're not so famed — 

By GrEO. L. Brown and R. S. Duncanson 

Some very curious things the Lord has done : 

He made Niagara — then made this trio, 

Church, Brown and Duncanson ! Rejoice Ohio ! 

Of these great painters of Niagara, 

Thy colored son deserves the most eclat. 

I think the Lord felt he must try his patience, 

By not inflicting well-earned castigations 

On fellows who should round the world be scourged, 

That it of blasphemy like theirs be purged ! 

My leisure fails me here ; more facts I could compress, 
Were almost all our Art not worse than nothingness. 
This prince of humbugs, this great gasbag Church, 
Our writers have put up on his high perch. 
In Art (excuse the phrase) they " go it blind ;" 
Take the Atlantic Monthly ; there you '11 find : 
" Church AND Turner !" ye gods and little fishes ! 
But don't they serve us up some curious dishes ! 
And wot you not what has become of him, 
The meek man Moses, limber too of limb, 
High on a hill and painted by friend Page ? 
You call that queer work great in phrases sage. 
Write yourselves down chief asses of the age. 
You puff fl7'^/5;!-photographers to get 
Scenes wanting in your ar/-collection yet; 
Old woman's twaddle on the stereoscope. 
Proves that you blindly through creation grope, 
But for your blindness chatter all the louder, 
Swearing there 's nothing fit to eat but chowder ; 
But I've no time to waste on words like yours ; 
It is a gabbling nothing ever cures ; 
ATLANTIC Monthly ! H'm ! you're not knee-deep, 
Nor is there salt enough in you to keep. 



A SATIRE. 83 

Art in the New York Tribune shines as bright, 
With like long ear-appendages bedight ; 
My good friend Page I might have passed in quiet, 
If dunder-pates in folly ran not riot. 
" Italian peasants" I think it was called, 
Where Page our eyes astounded and appalled ; 
Greeley's Art-editor this strange thing praised, 
And proved the critic and the painter crazed — 
A great, great picture he cried out amazed. 
I'll not conceal that I owe him a grudge, 
This self-appointed, blatant, high Art judge. 
" The name of Frankenstein," he tried to sneer, 
" Connected with Niagara we hear !" 
Then the vile thing in private matters grubbed. 
For which the Gotham daubers got well snubbed ; 
What do you know. Brute-fool ! what do you know ! 
Back to your kennel with your fetid flow ! 
Back to your kennel ! dare not bring again 
Your carious carcass among decent men ! 

Greeley ! your back shall not escape my whip ; 
You are responsible for this — come, strip ! 
For pictures, poetry, for pious tracts. 
You have no fancy ; you want stubborn facts. 
I'll give you some : I've worked as hard as you 
Through all my life at what I had to do ; 
I've been as earnest, faithful, diligent, 
On good work only all the while intent; 
Nor wealth nor office have I sought and gained, 
Of which at least the first you have obtained ; 
If in political mud-pools you find 
The suitable contentment for your mind. 
Though you see naught in Nature nor in Art, 
Aside from your quite profitable part, 
You should respect the earnestness you feel, 
On other earnest men not put your heel ; 



84 AMERICAN ART: 

If ignorant of Art, are you of men ? 

Why to spitvenom give your columns then ? 

You are too busy with the awful cares 

Of nations, armies and like grand affairs, 

" On, on to Richmond !" you must daily yelp, 

Like any half-drowned, half-blind, unlicked whelp," 

You can not stop your office well to rule. 

While you tell Lincoln he is but a fool ! 

Nay, see the force of habit ! your large talk 
Of earnestness, of extra upright walk, 
So long imposed on us, sticks to my pen — 
And this I have to take all back again. 
'T is now believed by those who were your friends, 
With public virtue you mask private ends ; 
Of a triumvirate the jackass, you 
Were fed on thistles by the other two. 
Sometimes a noxious Weed you got to chew ; 
The public crib they closed to your sharp hunger : 
Now as you thought yourself chief freedom-monger, 
You kicked the traces in an ugly fit — 
Come, tell us — how much have you made by it ? 
Weeds will choke all the seed that you can sow, 
Meanwhile in you we now all learn to know 
Not the sincere, impracticable dreamer, 
But the incompetent, the foiled, sore schemer — 

Come ! be by searching truth's tribunal tried ! 
Come forth ! if you've got sober since you died, 
You, drunken mad-dog, Edgar Allan Poe — 
Is it my fault that I must call you so ? 
Your works, like you, are born of alcohol ; 
Horrid monstrosities, distortions all ; 
It needs no doctor's gallipot or jar. 
Filled with that stuff, to keep them as they are ; 
Soaked with its strange and strong, insidious power, 
Your tales the many eagerly devour ; 



A SATIRE. 85 

The Barnum of the Western Museum, Franks, 

Here for apt illustration shall have thanks ; 

He fitted up a noted murderers' room, 

Of victims, too, which they sent to the tomb, 

Wax figures with authentic, gaping gashes, 

The weapons that made all these hideous slashes ; 

An hundred dollars covered the expense — 

Three thousand dollars was his recompense ! 

You, Poe, through all your nature most debased, 

You pandered to this craving tiger-taste ; 

King Alcohol through you once ruled our realm 

Of literature, you staggered at its helm ; 

By English critics, too, were recognized, 

A fact which was by us most highly prized. 

You, with an impudence sublimely brazen, 

In Art your frantic fumes must largely blazon ; 

Here I've a crew to pick with you, my friend — 

Your poor, poor raven that rhymes without an end ? 

No, mad dog, no ! but do you recollect 

How at my pictures once you picked and peeked ? 

They were done soberly, with anxious care, 

No time, no labor on them did I spare, 

All that nigh any fool could have seen there ; 

Nor was the labor lost, they were well painted ; 

Then you, with every fiber liquor-tainted — 

You, YOU, who all your life could not walk straight. 

With swaggering ignorance my work berate ? 

When in the gutter the last time you lay, 

When death, disgusted, almost turned away, 

When you with rot-gut whisky dying stunk, 

And thus into Grod's presence reeled Dead-drunk — 

I tell you, mad dog, when I heard all this, 

I helped outraged humanity, to hiss ! 

You need not say now nothing should be said, 

That I am living and that you are dead — 



86 AMERICAN art: 

You drink yourself to death ; must I forego, 
Be balked of justice and revenge ? Not so ; 
In prose to prick me you chose your own time, 
And I choose mine to pay you back in rhyme ; 
Avaunt ! and nevermore to me come nigh — 
I do believe you stink of whisky yet- — good bye ! 

Ralph Waldo Emerson ! does not that roll ! 
There ought to be some grand things in his poll ! 
And what he writes has volumes of big sound, 
It seems at least, if 't is not clear, profound ; 
He writes Art-essays ; stumbles right and left, 
Imparts no sense, yet is of sense bereft ; 
A funny way he has to dignify 
Art-matters in the reading public's eye : 
That Newton with a tube stuck through the roof, 
Makes out that stars spin round, is ample proof, 
Sir Isaac from all Art can stand aloof; 
What is so fine in foolish Pembroke's eyes. 
Illimitable greatness may despise ; 
Greatness serene, sublimely, calmly cool, 
Surely it can afford to play the fool ; 
Of course ; of course, too, Emerson's fine sense, 
Extols the "stone-dolls" smart impertinence; 
And all the while. One called our God looks on, 
Knows every grain of sand, each sparrow gone — 
He may give " stone-dolls" an approving nod — 
If so, excuse Him, He is only God — 
While great Sir Isaacs his creation overlook- 
Ralph Waldo Emersons vast nothings talk and book- 
These flesh-dolls deign to deal but in The Large — 
The Lord poor little things must take in charge. 

I could write on and never reach the end, 
Poor Art from these wiseacres to defend ; 



A SATIRE. 87 

That female fellow Fanny Wright was smart, 
When she declared that, knowing naught of Art, 
Naught would she write ; and it was too, most gracious, 
When in all else she proved so contumacious. 
Art-knowledge, knowledge of dear Nature's looks, 
lluskin alone perhaps shows in his books. 

Young man ! would you to Art devote your life ? 
Would you be minus babies and a wife, 
Resign cash, sympathy, position too, 
Have every dunce turn up his nose at you 
AVho waxes rich with rise of real estate, 
Who onions, beans, pork, whisky learns to rate, 
Who in man's lowest wants can speculate, 
Ay, getting rich, can found an upper class, 
Though he sold whisky at three cents the glass, 
Where wealth thus gotten he may haply mix 
With rich steam-doctors and their number six ; 
Where moneyed cobblers smattering of law. 
The dunghill's top claim as the soundest straw ; 
Where prime and mess pork-maggots put on airs, 
And take low life with them up stairs ; 
Where pettifoggers, wrangling all their lives. 
May get the daughters of such folk for wives, 
(I ne'er saw one for whom I'd give a fig 
Inside of her expensive, dowdy rig) 
But this, the pure Elysium of elite. 
This happy mixture savory and sweet, 
This most refined and elegant hon-ton, 
A dauber do you think dare look upon ? 
I say to you, young man, lay down your brush, 
Art maddens all the minds it can not crush, 
Now, now alas ! for you it is still worse 
Than e'er before, still greater is its curse ; 
Let me conjure you, heed the words I say, 
And leave at once cursed Art's accursed way. 



»» AMERICAN art: 

Now by photography's conceited pride, 
What 's wanted of cheap portraiture 's supplied, 
The only crib at which true Art might feed, 
The snouts and feet of beasts of basest breed, 
Are crowding with characteristic greed. 

Result legitimate ! hear on, young man ! 
Learn more facts why all Art I'd have you ban ! 
Years since a daub, painted they said by West, 
Our papers puifed as if they were possessed ; 
And so they were — of twenty cents a line. 
Each time they let the showman say 't was fine, 
And made his words their own : Dick L'Hommedieu 
Owned part of the Gazette (a right good fellow too) 
We — he and I — spoke with a little heat — 
I claimed they were compelled their words to eat — 
Said he : " We had the best of it, I think," 
He struck his pockets and I heard them chink — 
" We got the dimes ! But come — let 's take a drink !" 

Excited by this picture-war, I made 
An effort at Christ-pictures that ne'er paid. 
The first I painted caused quite a sensation — 
An accident — not an appreciation. 
Day after day the crowds rushed in to see ; 
To all I tendered affability, 
I asked e'en Littleworth to come ; he came, 
He bolted in, no greeting brought, no shame, 
Shufiled a bee-line for the picture quick. 
And with his dirty paw felt if 't was slick. 
Our papers praised my picture quite as much 
As they had done the bogus West botch-touch. 
And every body said my road was clear 
To fame and fortune, and that they were near. 
None bought, none ordered pictures though, not one ; 
For many months I still worked on and on. 
Till sickened to the very heart, I swore 
Never to paint Christ-pictures any more. 



A SATIRE. 89 

Nick Littleworth pushed his poor drunken pet, 

Whose SouLEless daubs will to the garret get, 

As will the work of all he recommended ; 

I can aflford to laugh ; though thus befriended 

Are his poor pets now better off than I — 

Was it worth more to fawn than to defy? 

So fashion flocks, led by some goose or gander, 

Yet wretched Art ! it pays not e'en to pander ! 

Among these people I had a few friends ; 

But every thing to fashion's dictum bends ; 

When they their portraits wanted, they too went 

Where Littleworth, not Art, sweet graces lent — 

Oh Lord ! that 6ZocA;head ! was 't for you 't was meant? 

Some of my oldest friends their walls have filled, 
At large expense, with judgment all unskilled — 
Pictures of note they bought — none such had I; 
What matter then if I was left to die. 

And other friends I have in whose sage view 
Now photographs I should be painting too. 
A little man with but a little head. 
And nothing in it — so somebody said — 
Has a big Art-shop of photography, 
Therefore my master in all Art must be. 
('Mong our photographers he is the only one 
Who has enough to do — gets funny fashion's run) 
This little chap would stand behind my chair 
And snarl : " What 's that ! that 's not sldn-color there !" 
Young man ! how I have worked to play this part ! 
At last, thank God ! could I not reach High Art? 
This puny fellow, with his puny brain. 
And he has not enough to get insane, 
Who in all other work he tried but failed. 
Without an effort he High Art has scaled, 
Without a look at Nature, or a thought 
Beyond the money to his pockets brought ; 



90 AMERICAN ART : 

This Baby-booby, standing by my chair, 

Would snap : " What 's that ! that 's not shin-color there 1" 

For such 's his phrase to those who paint for him, 

And able men must heed his every whim j 

Unless a miracle soon interpose, 

Such destiny my Art-career must close, 

Digestion's happy process to keep up, 

On photographic diet I must sup, 

Grulp Baby-booby's soul-destroying dictation, 

Or in the next world try to dodge damnation. 

I am bedeviled till I am benumbed, 

'T is strange that I have not long since succumbed. 

Plow with enthusiasm must I not be fired, 

When so much of my brother's time and work 's required, 

A picture of Niagara, portraying 

The laws that falling waters are obeying, 

By slow subscription to dispose of — well, 

I should be glad that wmehow it will sell 

At less than half 't is worth, the truth to tell : 

For money or your life my landlord cries, 

Kent due for thirty months h^s patience tries? 

One hundred, yes, and fifty dollars due — • 

Enormous the amount! nay, he'll not sue, 

But tells me plainly I must leave my den : 

Now look at the consistency of men ! 

Who is to blame for this? through all this time, 

His agent nor himself asked for a dime; 

And he was kind a year since — so I wrote — 

But this he chokes, his hand 's nov/ at my throat; 

Yes, he was kind a year since ; now how changed ! 

A picture, it was at that time arranged, 

Should pay my rent; hate of photography I waived, 

That from the clutches oF this debt I might be saved ; 

The photographs he promises to send — 

He leaves, he writes not — but now brings the end. 



A SATIRE. 91 

" I have determined to make this room pay ;" 

Not one word of the picture does he say. 

I ask him : " Oh, I thought I'd let that go." 

(It would have paid the rent another year or so, 

E'en at the doubled rate ; on money may he thrive 

The paying which may me to desperation drive) 

I tried to change his purpose ; no appeal 

Could make his hardened heart, Rent-frantic, feel ; 

I hate my daubs and models ; there they stood, 

Were impotent to do me any good ; 

Yet seemed to say we'd help you if we could ! 

This man 's one of that inconvenient kind, 

Who make a bargain and then change their mind ; 

He 's one of those who use an obligation 

Which they confer, to work your degradation, 

And yet can talk of merit's elevation. 

* * * * * is my landlord's name ; 

He changed, nor are my lines of him the same ; 

When last he came, had you been by, young man, 

Beneath good manners his rough soul to scan. 

You would have felt it was the devil's doing. 

To put it in your head Art to be wooing ! 

I've worked enough to pay my way twice over, 
For this, for any dirty world's best clover ; 
Ay, to society I'm not in debt ] 
Some petty sums to persons I owe yet — 
If I shall ever, ever be so blest 
To pay these, principal and interest, 
No other favor will I ask of God 
Than that I never, never may be trod 
Into the dirt again by my own kind, 
Who leave th' infernal furies far behind. 
Hear more : men give me little work to do- 
That little they 're so slow to pay for, too ; 
The pittance sometimes seems delayed by fate— 
Grod ! I have learnt to labor and to wait I 



92 AMERICAN art: 

Necessity 's the measure of my wants, 
No squandering of means my conscience haunts ; 
If work contracted for that I have done 
Throughout my life for which th' accounts still run, 
Had but been paid for, I could have escaped 
My soul by hobnailed soles being badly scraped, 
By those for whom I can not find a name — 
Dogs, brutes^ thrice, ten times BRUTES is true but tame- 
Their number also swells the human shame — 
See ! CoMSTOCK ! anaconda-like would rush 
Unlooked-for on me, all my bones to crush, 
To slaver me with slime, swallow me whole — 
My boyhood friend appoints this for my role ! 
'T is horrible ! those I'd love more, they too. 
Have made me feel that there was nothing true. 
Had I been paid for work I've done, I say, 
I should swear less, be more inclined to pray. 
And of pestiferous debt be rid this day. 
King, ding ding dong ding ring ring ding dong ding 
*' Walk to the cap'n's office please and settle," 
Or else my Muse may scald you in her kettle. 
One fellow though deserves not any grace : 
You know Nick Littleworth delayed my case 
In court e'en after he had turned a shade — 
I gained it, but the money 's not yet paid. 
Defendant went to war, and we shall see, 
Since he himself has no integrity, 
Therefore that of the country to preserve. 
He must have leisure if he has not nerve. 
To get my pay I sued John H. Piatt, 
For what I painted five years since — near that ; 
His own dear self it was ; a touch or two 
May now make it more lovely yet still true. 
Plaintifi", defendant in Ohio can 
Swear hard that each is much the better man. 



A SATIRE. 93 

This fellow's insolence I could forgive, 

His baseness to defraud me could outlive, 

But when he swears that all I swear *s a lie, 

I swear by heaven ! I will not pass it by. 

My hard-earned dollar thus he'd swear from me — : 

Out to the public with his perjury ! 

Let infamy 'mong men his portion be — 

Its red-hot tire I clap around his soul, 

Through life from youth to age now let him roll ! 

Sore is my spirit with such petty ravage ; 
•And yet you would not, would you, get so savage ! 

Off and away my soul in thy balloon ! 
This grubby globe thou canst not leave too soon ; 
Rise ! rise beyond this round of dust and mud, 
To where worlds made of light in millions bud ! 
Yet look a moment o'er earth's fading scene — 
Hear how truth throttles words awed by the mean — 
Hear how men talk God, Love, Eternal Life, 
See how they act a greedy, bloody strife ; 
See, see how wearing, anxious ardor sweeps, 
Each one who can some dirt to little heaps — 
(The dirt I scrape together I must eat — 
E'en then the dimes will not make both ends meet) 
See how they hug their heaps with trembling arms, 
Proving a lie their speech of heaven's great charms ; 
Then shouldst thou spy another grub I hate, 
Please drop a bag of ballast on his pate ; 
Then sailing on, leave littleness behind, 
Then all resolved into a dreamy mind, 
Let me still on, still farther, farther float — 
To regions still more, more and more remote — 
Till thrilled with rapture never known before, 
T feel at last that deadening doubt is o'er, 
I feel at last that long-sought, longed-for lore — 



94 AMERICAN art: 

I feel the fanning of that mighty motion, • 
Its ether lap me like a living lotion 

Down, down with him to earth, presumptuous worm ! 
Here is his place to curse, to creep, to squirm. 
What, what has he to do with things above — 
Send down the slave ! give him a headlong shove ! 
He o'er the rest of us would lift his head — 
We '11 show him something different instead — 
He like the lark to soar till lost to sight — 
He swim in splendor's surging sea of light — 
He sing Love, Grlory, Groodness and a God — 
If Ae mounts he shall carry up the hod ! 

Be not in such a hurry ; I'll come back ; 
I'll bear and if I can, inflict the rack ; 
My brow must still be plowed by bloody brogans. 
And my poor soul still furrowed by G-rub-Grogans, 
By contumely I must be still ignored. 
Still maddened must my ire on men be poured ; 
Yet why, alas ! to none I would think harm — 
How inexpressible is not the charm 
When sweet good-nature from the human face 
Beams kindly on me with its heavenly grace ! 
The little children ! how I love them yet ! 
I can not live without a little pet- 
Since I'll not grieve, for that is want of sense, 
My brain sinks into cold indifference. 
Or burns with a satiric, vengeful lust, 
Not that it wills it, but because it must. 
I try to do good work ; I try to please ; 
The more I try the more they snarl and teaze ; 
I've walked the streets distracted all the night, 
I tried to. think if I was doing right 

And do you ask me why I stay so long 
Vv^here true Art is not valued at a song. 
Where I at last am kicked into the street, 
And from a den to which few would retreat, 



A SATIRE. 95 

Where I, a strict, enthusiastic student, 
Have not one habit to be called imprudent? 

Nay, go into our Sanitary Fair, 
And take a look at some grand portraits there. 
Am I so rusty in anatomy, 
Or do some people change prodigiously — 
Those portraits Longfellow's, Murdoch's ? those men, 
When I last saw them, had their clothes on then, 
And yet their human shape through tailor's skill 
Discernible, yea quite distinct was still ; 
But T. Buchanan Bead's and Healy's Art — 
And that with us is a distinguished part — 
From the poor tailors snatches the great prize, 
The human form completely to disguise — 
Disguise ! no, no, not that ! but to disfigure ! 
Wrathful disgust ! hide not thy righteous rigor ! 
'Mong all our shameless daubs there are none bigger ! 
'T is inconceivable what men may do 
Till the enormity 's confronting you ! 
Is that Longfellow's face? I ought to know it — 
On canvas once I took some pains to show it ; 
Murdoch ! read Bead just as he is of late, 
For he deserves from you no better fate. 

Young man ! you, candidate for Art, hear on ! 
From other facts more lessons you may con. 
These men, Bead, Healy, of good minds, mature, 
Do work that proves nothmg our Art can cure. 
Both breathed our buoyant, free, expanding air. 
In Europe too, drew inspiration there — 
Yet see, what are they? something 's wrong somewhere 1 
They paint no photographs • but I would rather drudge 
For Baby-booby, let him of '■^ slciii- color ' judge. 
Than smear like Healy gross anomalies. 
Or Bead-like bend to worse inanities ! 

Thomas J. Gallagher ! my good old friend. 
Have you lost all your bones — oh heaven forefend ! 



96 AMBKICAN AKT : 

Slick, soft, you simper, oh you 're very nice-- 
No other way you'd look at any price — 
Read leaves out "vulgar detail" and the man, 
And paints you, pleases you as none else can? 

Haply in Sculpture we shall find no names 
Whose fame our Art and common sense defames ? 
Ralph Waldo Emerson declares our race may yet, 
Like Newton, far beyond this childish sculpture get; 
Doctors differ : Nathaniel Hawthorne tells us 
That being almost born in clothes compels us 
Only to deal in portrait-busts, and therefore 
The Art of Sculpture is already done for. 
I do not know ; but it does seem too bad, 
When of no harm I think, but feel so glad 
The prints from Palmer's Captive to behold, 
With child-like glee its beauties see unfold, 
And take sweet comfort that she has no clothes 
To sweep up — ay, what every body knows — 
Defiling thus those feet and ankles, legs. 

With filth that comes quite near its very dregs 

I say it seems too bad to have a mind, " 

That these nice people may not think refined, 

Like our Academy ladies — that fat one — 

They 're vastly exercised the nude to shun. 

And prove by clamor where their thoughts still run ; 

The mother can not feed her little pet, 

Whose tiny tongue has learnt no talking yet, 

Without ofi"ending, shocking baby's sight, 

And if she wash it, hers must get a fright ; 

Had but the Lord shaped us like baby's doll — 

Nay, we should then miss all this fol-de-rol ! 

Palmer ! I will ask no man to pursue 
What I think he or soon or late must rue ; 
But if they in a decent way will let you live, 
Such work as yours I'll hail as long as you will give. 



A SATIRE. 97 

Flaming in capitals conspicuous. 
One Randolph Rogers we must now discuss. 
To Randolph Rogers, (that too sounds quite big,) 
Nathaniel Hawthorne gives the great man's rig. 
^T is in the preface to the Marble Faun , 
He not being born in them, such clothes gets on, 
An ill-made suit that can not hide the clown ; 
He strutted in it here in our big town — 
Thus preface-labeled By Authority, 
Some of our daubers feasted him, hee ! hee ! 
I'm glad and do not think it is a sin, 
That Popkins was by him well taken in ; 
The scale of patron and of patronized. 
Is very happily here equalized. 
The Capitol's extension has large doors. 
Whose bass-reliefs are some of this chap's chores ; 
I have not seen them and I need not see. 
With Uncle Sam's collection they agree 
No doubt in happy imbecility. 
I'm past the angry point ; I can not hoot : 
Come Cuffy, you know where, apply your boot — 
This rascal 's worse than Church ! quick, kick him out ! 
How dare you, Hawthorne, send this scrub about ! 
Do let me ask you where this is to stop ? 
Prime beef you advertise and give us slop ? 
Your eyes are so untaught, you can not tell 
The miserable from the master's spell? 
I saw some of your pet pig's rooting here — 
They called that making portrait-busts, oh dear ! 
Or haply, Hawthorne, you might never nose 
The cunning that could on your mind impose — 
The work on those bronze doors may have been wrought 
By able, poor men whom his money bought : 
If they are well done this must be the case — 
I'll not believe yet man could be so base, 



98 AMERICAN art: 

Could prostitute all art, all manhood so — 
From truly good work fall so far below — 
Could decency so utterly contemn — 
Had he of true Art's garment touched the hem, 
As Randolph E-ogers with his modeling tool 1 
I state the simple facts, am calm and cool, 
Only he must not take me for a fool. 

The sculptor-hero of your Marble Faun, 
Friend Hawthorne, is in stupid Art far gone ; 
Now when from real sculptors, works you stole, 
That should fit snugly to his foggy soul, 
'T is not unfair to think them and their labors 
To Randolph Rogers and his work near neighbors. 

The Nation's Capitol-extension is the one 
For which those doors by Randolph Rogers have been done. 
The Government is liberal ; it has paid 
Large sums for works of Art of such a grade, 
That most of them worse could not well be made. 
Intrigue, or want of intrigue interpose 
To let true merit show there what it knows. 
Allston, of all our painters the most thorough, . 
His way to this work could or would not burrow. 
(But then the Boston millionaires contrive 
A show of his works to keep him alive : 
Two thousand dollars, ah ! he gets by it, 
Also from fear of fire a nervous fit) — 
But Billy Powells Congress circumvent 
Obtain the work it for a native meant; 
That they were not born here they can deny — 
Suppose they do — that 's nothing but a lie ! 

I fear that Leutze's picture 's but addition, 
And with the rest comes into competition. 
Leutze ! 'gainst you I have some special rage 
You may remember ; also William Page. 



A SATIRE. 99 

'T is not presumptuous for me to declare, 

That both should do your work with greater care. 

Both of you able and both so reputed — 

Tell me why by yourselves this is refuted ! 

Page I think always tries to do his best, 

Though by some imps at times he seems possessed; 

But rests there not on you a greater curse. 

That brings your work from well to worse and worse, 

Though singly almost, pictures fill your purse ? 

Somehow or other Art will bring a blight, 

E'en change herself sometimes into a fright. 

Young candidate for Art ! would you still know 
Why from this smoky town I do not go ? 
O'er all the Continent it is the same — 
Art everywhere is blind and halt and lame, 
And monster-humbugs gobble up the game. 
What ! go to England ! yes, I see from here, 
A sublunary Art-heaven there appear ! 
I see an insolent, proud commoner 
To Haydon play th' inhuman almoner ; 
See Haydon's spurting throat and spattered brain, 
Braggart civilization well sustain ! 
And Turner fold his hands, die in despair, 
Because they have the foul fool-critics there ! 
If their Art-craving still proves insatiate, 
See ! Parliament, at an enormous rate. 
Old Masters buys, and has the dirty fellows 
Scrubbed, cleaned of all the skill that crudeness mellows ; 
For work like this men would on wheels be broken, 
Had to mankind at large Art ever spoken. 
Such mere brute-life is easily replaced, 
But is the life from pictures thus erased ? 
Oh, Nineteenth Century! where 's more intense 
Stupidity since time deigned to commence ? 
Such works of Art to all mankind belong — 
Had books thus sufi'ered, then we'd hear of wrong ! 



100 AMERICAN ART : 

Ay, hear these very people howl at us, 

And grow most impudently virtuous. 

When Charleston harbor we would fill with stones — 

I wish it could be done with rebels' bones ! 

In the short history of our poor race. 
Twice Art has had a dubious public place ; 
Then state-religion through Art's limits laid 
The road to heaven for those they would degrade ; 
E'en then it never touched the great, live heart. 
Of which the best of us must be a part 
If we would live a life warm, active, bold, 
Not in unsympathetic snow-drifts rolled. 
Nay do not hope : it never will be better ; 
Bare backs and empty bellies still must fetter 
The People's means ; poor painters, sculptors live 
On what the few rich whimsicals will give. 
And here the worst of all this business lies : 
Nowhere did education e'er comprise 
A knowledge of the beauty bathing us — 
Of Art that fain would be directing us — 
Nowhere is it considered a disgrace. 
Nothing to know of Art and Nature's face. 
As Jefferson proved this when I began. 
It shall be clinched now by a live statesman. 
Of two great Presidents grandson and son, 
'Mong statesmen left to us surpassed by none, 
Of culture as we term it, ripe and rare, 
Charles Francis Adams, now in England, where 

Of these United States he has the care 

He at Niagara pounced on the pictures 

I made of it, and passed unasked his strictures ; 

Their color he was sure must be untrue, 

Or if in Nature found, it would not do 

To paint it so — I have forgotten why — 

With few and flitting glances of his eye 



101 



His judgment 's final on my work at once, 
He makes me as compared with liim a dunce ; 
My young friend embryo-dauber, tlius it stands : 
I work all day with all my head, heart, hands — 
For months, for years this water is my study ; 
Then Adams tells me that my mind is muddy — 
Not in those words — for that he 's too polite, 
He only says that I can not be right ; 
He gets his knowledge by Grod's bounteous grace, 
While I with sweat and toil a phantom chase. 

I question not his course as diplomat, 
Or that, when Seward stirred him up somewhat, 
He still most prudently John Bull should pat : 
That Seward he should think too fiery — (ah ! 
Just what he said of our Niagara) 
Nor do I doubt, when I take pains to see. 
It is his business then to learn from me ; 
It is presumptuous unless he shows brains 
That soak up knowledge without taking pains 
To doubt results that I have not obtained, 
Ere brain, eye, hand, heart long with care I trained. 

That artist is of fool the synonym 
Throughout society is not a whim. 
The secretary of a petty company 
Of fire-insurance, and my friend, coolly told me, 
His work with hot brain-fever laid him low — 
Then with his arm he made a flourish — so — 
Mocking a dauber with his brush — " That 's play ! 
Could I like you be doing that all day !" 
Poor fellow ! then he'd get in no bad way ! 

Learned, illiterate, low, high, all are 
In all affecting Art quite on a par. 
See how they stare at me with blank surprise— 
A.11, Byron-like, cry out why '' we have eyes !" 



102 AMERICAN ART: 

Yes, and like him finely you use them too — 
How the Medici Venus he can " do," 
With trim Canova cap the classic view ! 

A dauber dare these sons of song sublime 
Touch with his sneering and sarcastic rhyme? 
Did they not tell me, my friends Bryant, Groddard, 
Whom with my lucubrations I had bothered, 
One Michael Angelo was but a jobber 
In poetry — that that great sculptor-dauber 
Wrote sonnets that were pretty good — that 's all — 
Need I to th' inference attention call? 

A part of my Niagara I read 
To one who some time after to me said 
That Byron's verses of St. Peter's pile 
Described Niagara in better style 
Than aught he knew of: now they are to me, 
With all their merit, phraseology, 
Illogical applied to any thing — 
Well, well, my lines may go for what they '11 bring. 
I 'm glad that my conclusion 's near at hand — 
If with my pen respect I can command, 
I hope 't will prove my Art-work and the craft 
Are not to be put 'mong the wholly daft. 

Some of my friends think I keep back too much, 
Ever of this world's cash my share to clutch. 
It may be so ; one knows not till one tries : 
Since I would try all things, I advertise 
To model and paint portraits, figures too j 
Views of Niagara I'll furnish you. 
And landscapes — all in any quantity — 
You may yourself judge of their quality, 
When told I paint and model as I write ; 
Take no advantage though of my bad plight, 
Be liberal and be sure to pay at sight. 



A SATIRE. lOB 

I wrote some things that I would like to sell 
To a newspaper that will pay me well. 

For this campaign — the Presidential — I would write, 
In some way I would like for the great cause to fight; 
My soul is in it, and I fairly burn 
Copperheads, traitors on the spit to turn. 

Still other ways and means I will devise : 
I hereby for a Patron advertise ; 
No Littleworth, no Popkins need apply — 
(Howe'er, of me perhaps such will be shy) — 
But one whom money makes much more a man 
Than honest poverty in this world can. 
Through all the length and breadth of this great land, 
Is there that man who '11 take me by the hand, 
Who '11 say, keep, at your work and I will see 
That you have no small cash-perplexity — 
Is there throughout civilization one? 
Let him but speak — how soon will I say done. 

Who wants Niagara — that splendid view, 
With which this satire has so much to do, 
Painted on canvas, six feet by fifteen, 
Thus large to show the details we have seen ; 
The canvas is prepared and so am I, 
With careful studies, now my brush to ply ; 
Who '11 give an order, pay half in advance — 
Is there a moneyed man who '11 take this chance? 
I must have two years time to paint it in. 
Truth and completeness for the work to win. 

Yes, I would linger in the Fine Arts' presence, 
Their beautiful, their exquisite florescence. 
More delicate, ethereal each day, 
As if each moment it would flit away, 
The common, beautiful, the olden, new, 
Nature grows ever to my raptured view. 



104 AMERICAN ART : 

How pure and sharp are not those tints and lines ; 
But is there one that really defines / 

An end or a beginning or a place — 
Impalpabilities each other chase ! 
I fear to touch with paint what seems a breath, 
Looking as if a touch could cause its death, 
And yet you feel that it but vails a force, 
O'erwhelming in mysterious scope and source. 
See from th' impalpable the palpable obtrude — 
Look at that beauteous woman, Grod-made, nude — 
Why to be looked at should she be afraid. 
And why should you false modesty parade ? 
Her power as woman you may feel full well, 
Her strange, dementating, enchanting spell. 
Yet why not look at her e'en as a lover — 
Of course then there is nothing here above her — 
Not for earth's gold, its palaces, its lands. 
Would you give one of those loved little hands ! 
And you are right — look at her ! how she glows, 
Each moment Nature novel charms bestows ; 
Flooded, not by the sun's sharp, linear light. 
That seems for human flesh too strong, too bright, 
But by that glorious glow around that orb, 
When the clear sky can its great fire absorb ; 
This brilliant glow attempered by the blue, 
Griving to human flesh its brightest hue — 
Almost from angels tribute to demand, 
Bathed in this glory, see the woman stand 
On feet that are so wee, that are so weird, 
Can they sustain the structure o'er them reared, 
Whose swelling outline ceases not its scope 

Till it clasps almost all earth's bliss and hope 

Behold the greater beauty of the man — 
It seems a shame to be but for a span ; 
How I have seen him leap and dive and swim, 
Watched how the waves love-laved each supple limb ; 



106 



What agile strength with highest beauty mated ! 
How thoughtlessly is woman overrated ! 
Poor Haydon says she 's handsomest, and then 
His instinct gives us drawings but of men. 
The curves that Ruskin calls the infinite, 
(The finest line of beauty thus he hit) 
Are well defined in man ; in woman these 
Approach the circular and — if you please — 
Short-lived is woman's beauty if she give 
What Nature must have that the race may live : 
Though prodigal, destructive, Nature still 
Her best work well to keep exerts some skill. 
Beauty bedecks the male of bird and beast, 
While the poor female always gets the least. 
How firmly rest man's feet upon the ground — 
How lithesomely they leave it on the bound ! 
Ay, it is meet that Beauty mate with Power ! 
From youth, to past the middle age, each hour 
To well-made men should be one of content : 
The power to punish the impertinent — 
To give all dirty dogs a stunning blow. 
Can any one a greater pleasure know? 
Nay, do not talk to me of leveling laws — 
Give me the strength to level, or to pause 
And pass contemptuously the currish cause 

And now once more, young candidate for Art, 
I '11 speak to you that not like me you '11 smart. 
I want, deserve no sympathy, for I 
Was warned when a mere child, Art not to try. 
They could not tell me though what else to do — 
A panacea I have found for you. 
If hewing wood and drawing water be 
Beneath your high and mighty destiny. 
If fancy-work you'd do, then take to writing; 
'T is easier fiir than painting, more inviting 



106 AMERICAN ART: 

In all respects for profit and for pleasure, 

And men will get mucli nearer to your measure. 

Do not write novels, poetry, no ! no ! 

Into the large arena you must go, 

The printing-press and liberty have made — 

Help those who use the pickaxe and the spade — 

Write, that hard work the herd not more degrade ! 

Newspapers wield great and increasing power ; 

Here you can find some work for every hour ; 

Newspapers are read ; you will get your pay, 

And you can live thus in a manly way. 

Small business you '11 find here ; the Potter-grubs, 

The handsome, heavy-headed Halstead-scrubs, 

May get the place you ought to have ; but still 

Somewhere of paying work you '11 find a rill. 

This in the mean Fine Arts you never will. 

Mean as they are, they will not be degraded, 

To love photography they can not be persuaded ; 

But local editors of papers may 

Use the best language for what they would say ; 

If you have force you may climb upward thence, 

As editor-in-chief to show your sense ; 

There honor, comfortable cash and power 

You may secure, nor need you once to cower — 

'T will teach you too to write at any hour. 

Soul-stirring it must be to know your words 

Grladden and move men's hearts like songs of birds. 

Awakening them with joy to their hard task ; 

To mold their views could nobler part you ask ? 

If you then feel, good poetry to scribble 

Is part of your vocation, take a nibble ! 

But see the Future of the press unfold ! 
What great and glorious work we there behold ! 
How well hath not fair Freedom lately spod — 
Our odious oligarchy 's almost dead ! 



107 



Millions of wliite and of black slaves are bounding 

At once to freedom — the world's freedom rounding ! 

How ignorant, illiterate these are — 

Would for their tyrants else 'gainst us they war? 

E'en in the fields for freedom long since won, 

How much, how much remains yet to be done ! 

Hunger and cold all men must keenly feel, 

Relief from these is to all else the keel ; 

How radical the changes to be made, 

Ere cold and hunger shall no man degrade. 

Still we may doubt, with all drag-chains removed, 

If mankind's folly be not ever proved ; 

No intellect seems and no training sure, 

Inherent meanness of the race to cure. 

Knowledge, religion, laws, all they 've invented, 

Show them, how often ! but the more demented. 

The pound of brain above the average — 

Lusus naturce — gives the privilege 

To be sometimes herein above the rest — 

JSI'on compos when it thinks it does its best; 

The god-like sells his sense, his life, his soul. 

To get where slavery willed a Polk should roll ; 

Though he flays with sarcasm puny Polk, 

He'll pass, to reach Polk's place, beneath the yoke. 

Then die as he deserves, his masters' joke. 

Why will not men work for the work itself. 

If they can live, why seek for office, pelf? 

What is so valuable that men can give 

Or God e'en, that man's manhood should outlive? 

Is precious life not worthless if obtained 

By means whose nature his pure nature stained ? 

See ! Doctor Samuel Johnson, High Church Tory, 

Whose name is blazoned with exceeding glory, 

Whose trained mind reached that regal, rigid rule, 

That must of tyranny be but the tool ; 



108 AMERICAN AET: 

A famous moralist who never knew 

Common politeness that was due to you. 

Dean Swift, who was a god compared with him — 

Swift's great brain only water made to swim — 

To spatter his last hours with lying spume, 

This burly moral Johnson can presume. 

He prick poor Swift for what was not a fault — 

He dare that wreck — dare any one assault ! 

Of life itself, of friends, of money, fame. 

He had enough ere death's slow summons came ; 

Now see him die ! could we like him be blind, 

And spare this low disgrace to poor mankind ! 

He shows when seventy and five years old 

The worth of all the stuff he wrote and told ; 

Though sane as ever, how completely cracked : 

Here is a show, a driveler ! mangled, hacked, 

Hacked by himself to live, the fool must die, ~ 

While his mean soul gives to his creed the lie. 

If great men are so wrong and are so weak, 
When, where, for better things shall we then seek? 
Or does the common herd in common sense. 
Seem for less mind to find a recompense ? 
No matter : now occasion is at hand, 
To try the People in supreme command , 
And they have done well so far ; therefore friend. 
Drop palette, brushes, here a hand now lend — 
To make and keep men's freedom pure and stable, 
This cause needs all, all who are willing, able. 
How many are there now this cause to flout — 
Come ! come ! be at them ! put them to the rout ! 
The President freed slaves by proclamation. 
And that must be sustained by this great Nation. 
Of the Supreme Court there need be no fear, 
For if the People speak that court must hear. 



109 



Let all then go to work ; now is the time ; 
To be indifferent to this cause is crime. 

In such a crisis where are Fine Arts, ah ! 
Seem they not then a great and wild faux-'paz ? 
Till all get leisure, industry, desire, 
To see the beauteous, exquisite attire. 
The world we live in wears — until the soul 
Can do without bread, shelter, clothing, coal, 
Till then the Fine Arts are from life apart ; 
E'en if you 're rich, they may still crush your heart ! 
A universal language you would call 
That which is understood by none at all ? 
To feel that no one wants what you can make. 
May sometimes e'en the stoutest spirit shake ; 
At times her influence so soothing, tender, 
Nature refuses utterly to render. 
Niagara I love, yet all its power 
Could not illume for me the horrid hour. 

Reader — to-night I would fain reach the close ; 
The hour has passed long since when the cock crows ; 
Dead silence is at rest, the wagons rattle. 
And I suppose the pretty babies prattle, 
Or cry — and soon we'll hear the cry of battle — 
May victory to our bright banner come, 
In some way may all traitors soon succumb. 

A few words more : by some I have been told 
I swear too much in rhyming : do not scold ; 
Considering my subject well I think, 
At this, if 't is a failing, you may wink. 
Fuseli truly said it brought relief 
If we are suffering from some sorts of grief. 
Believe not though that I have carking care. 
And hug the notion I have much to bear ; 



110 AMERICAN art: 

And do not so eggregiously mistake, 

That ever aught but work keeps me awake. 

I know not how these lines will be received ; 

If they 're not read I may not be much grieved. 

I did my best ; I spared no work, no time, 

To say just what I meant in simple rhyme. 

Ah ! tell you what of all my stuff I think — 

Tell that I used indelible — h'm ! ink — 

Nay, of its merit here I shall not prate : 

But my paint-sculpture work I meant to vindicate ; 

It is my right to claim my just position — 

Of self-conceit that is no exhibition — 

You tell me all men talk so 1 do they, ah ! 

Yes — hear them, hear them at Niagara — 

There on the same spot where we stood so long, 

Sounding of self the laudatory gong ! 

" Nobody looking at this place would think 

That /built all those houses !" — ^drink, drink, drink I 

Drink self-conceit forever ! can you fill ? 

Man ! man ! vain animal ! you never will ! 

Three whitewashed shanties set up one by one, 

Were the great work this man swelled up upon, 

Where great Niagara is on the run. 

More-*agged e'en than little Littleworth, 
One of the sorriest sights I've seen on earth, 
Though quite a young man, came and gave a view 
Of all his toes and human nature too. 
He brought some drawings of the Falls to sell : 
I said, how you drew these I can not tell — 
Then he poured out a torrent of conceit. 
That Billem Sorry hardly could have beat ; 
*' A gift of Grod !" he cried, " 't was with me born !" 
I was astonished by this wight forlorn ; 
How voluble he was ! glib ! eloquent ! 
I thought his gaseous force would ne'er bo spent ; 



A SATIRE. Ill 

He proved m using words there is a way 

That sounds quite big and nothing has to say. 

His drawings? well, nothing could be more queer, 

Yet the brink's virile line did there appear ; 

(H'm ! look for tJiat in Church !) one was quite tragic — 

:A pig chased by a dog, as if by magic 

Vanished behind a rock adown the clijff, 

Showing his hinder parts, his tail, not stiff, 

Not sticking up, but curling in that line, 

Hogarth first showed us was so very fine, 

That " line of beauty," best in well-tailed swine — 

This fellow's genius though untaught had seized 

These tail-twists just as if they were not greased, 

This i^enius grasped these caudal convolutions. 

E'en gave their complex, curious evolutions ! 

The foreground this : the distance showed the fall, 

Which was like Church's, not a fall at all. 

By nature great, ye Naturals ! ah could, 
Could I speak of your merits as I would ! 
Grreat Billem Sorry, Church and our big Bones, 
E. Barrett Browning, brother Gripfin Jones, 
The naturalest artist of the set- — 
One more whose name escapes me is well met, 
Who modeled Washington and Liberty 
Crowning and getting crowned, which you can see 
Fenced in in Peter Cooper's Reading-room, New York ; 
Why add more specimens? with these I close my work. 
Immortals ! of earth's one immortal race, 
'Fore God and angels our great saving grace — 
Imagine these, imagine all like them. 
Together at Niagara — ahem ! 
When Art and Nature there their souls oppress, 
Then may the waiting world look for a mess ! 
Now watch them ! chattering, daubing, blind and deaf — 
It seems miraculous — beyond belief! 



112 



AMERICAN art: A SATIRE. 



But ha ! whose antics ! see tliem dance and grin ! 
Their laugh rings over the unceasing din — 
Ha ! mocking spray-sprites of Niagara, 
We join your ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha 




j 



liiiiBi'' 

018 597246A 



MM 









niJij 







